2018-19 Australian Baseball League Cards

I had heard that there were cards for the Australian Baseball League this season but I hadn't seen any until I got a package from Steve Smith the other day containing two cards from the set.  Steve sent me the cards of two players from the Sydney Blue Sox who had NPB experience - Alessandro Maestri (who played for Orix from 2012-15) and Shogo Nakashima (who played for the Swallows from 2015-17).  Here's the front and back of the cards:

Several things jump out about these cards.  First that they were made by Choice who's been making minor league cards in the US for over 20 years.  Second the photos of the players show them in their NPB uniforms instead of their Sydney uniforms.  I assume this is because of time constraints - the season started in mid-November and the set was released in mid to late December (I think).  Steve said that it was common in the set for players to be depicted wearing a non-ABL uniform - the examples he cited were Gift Ngoepe and Dwayne Kemp of Sydney being shown in Pirates and Netherlands WBC uniforms respectively; many of the Auckland players are shown wearing New Zealand WBC uniforms and Geelong manager Dae-Sung Koo is shown in a Sydney uniform.

The Australian Custom Baseball Cards blog had a post up about the set early last month.  The set is sold in 8 card packs and contains a base set of 79 cards (77 common cards plus 2 checklists) and a 10 card "foil card" insert set (numbered 78 to 87).  The cards include both current and former players - Ronald Acuna being probably the biggest name alumni player in the common cards with Acuna, Rhys Hopkins and Dave Nilsson being the biggest ones in the foil cards.  I was a little disappointed that none of the current NPB players who were in the league this winter (Shota Imanaga, Hayato Takagi, Taiga Hirasawa, etc) are in the set.  In fact I think the only one in the set other than Maestri and Nakashima to have any NPB experience is Koo (and I think Daryl George was an ikusei player for Orix a couple years ago but I could be mistaken).  None of the current CPBL or Korean players are included either.

I noticed something odd on the backs of Maestri and Nakashima's cards.  Maestri's stat line lists "Major Lg. Totals" consisting of a 16-13 record in 105 games.  Maestri has never actually played in MLB - those totals appear to be the compilation of his NPB and KBO stats (14-11 record with Orix and a 2-2 record with Hanwha in 2016).  But Nakashima's card back sums up his NPB stats as "Minor Lg. Totals" which seems inconsistent to me.

Steve asked me if I was interested in getting any more of these cards and I'm back and forth about whether I do or not.  I like them but I think I'd be much more interested in them if all the players were shown in their ABL uniforms and the NPB players were included in the set.  Still if I could possibly get a complete set at a reasonable price I might consider it.

Thanks to Steve for getting me these cards.