Blog Bat Around - My Projects - Updated

Just about a year ago I took part in a Blog Bat Around started by Night Owl Cards about the various card projects I was attempting to complete.  I thought I'd do a quick update on how those projects are going plus any new ones I've added.

First up - how I'm doing on the projects I listed last year?

2000 Upper Deck Olympics Baseball Team

As I reported last year, this one was actually done a year ago but I didn't have the last cards in hand yet.  Ryan had found the last two cards I needed and sent them to me last May.

1978 Yamakatsu JY6 set

Still need the Koichi Tabuchi card from this set.

2017 Topps Now WBC set

I reduced the number of cards I need for this set from 12 to only 3 but I haven't seen the last three I need very often and when I do, the seller wants at least $50 for each of them.  This may take a while.

2009 Konami WBC Inserts

This is another area where Ryan helped me out.  I'm down to only needing one of the "Special" cards but I still need eight of the "All Tournament Team" cards.

2003-06 BBM Rookie Edition sets

Not only did I not make any progress on any of these sets but I've misplaced my want lists!  I need to regenerate them and I need to do it fairly soon for reasons I will get into momentarily.

2017 Topps TBT WBC cards

Still need the Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa cards from this set.

1994-2000 BBM flagship sets

I made a lot of progress on the 1994 BBM set, again with Ryan's help.  I needed 45 cards from the set this time last year but a couple Yahoo! Japan Auction buys and some card shop visits by Ryan has gotten the total down to only eight.  Seven of those eight are rare low-numbered Swallows cards however and the other one is Hiroki Kokubo's rookie card so it won't necessarily be cheap or easy to complete but it's doable.  I also picked up the most expensive card I had left from the 1998 set (Yoshinobu Takahashi's rookie card) so that's getting more doable as well.  I also picked up a handful of 1997 cards as well.

1999 Teleca Sets

I'm still one card away from completing the 1999 Teleca regular set but the Premium set is complete.  Dan found me three of the four cards I needed and I got the last one from Rob Fitts when I bought some other Korean cards from him.

2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set

Surprisingly I made slow but steady progress on this set.  I got about seven cards from the set from various sources over the course of the year so I went from only having 15 cards to having 22.  Of course I still need 24 more cards but progress is progress.

Here's the new projects I added over the last year in no particular order:

2001 BBM Tigers set

2001 BBM Tigers #T55

After opening a box from this set a couple months ago I found that I was only six cards away from finishing it so I decided to go for it.  Ryan's already found five of them so it's almost done already.

2004 BBM 1st Version 2003 Asian Championship insert set

2004 BBM 1st Version "2003 Asian Championship" insert #AJ1

The 2004 BBM 1st Version set included an insert set for the Japanese National Team for the 2003 Asian Championship (which was a qualifier for the 2004 Olympics).  I'm a sucker for National Team sets and this is one of the few Japanese ones I don't have all the cards for.  I still need 16 of the 22 cards from the set so it'll take a while.

1999 Teleca Premium Korean Dream Team insert set

1999 Teleca Premium "Korean Dream Team" insert #D-13

Speaking of National Team sets...the 1999 Teleca Premium set included an insert set for the Korean National Team for the 1999 Asian Championship (at least I think it was for that tournament).  This is actually the only Korean National Team set that I'm aware of.  I'd had a couple cards from this set for a long time but I picked up most of the rest of the cards from a lot that Rob Fitts had up on Ebay.  I'm only three cards away from finishing the set.

2000 Teleca set

2000 Teleca #182

If you had told me a year ago that I'd only be 44 cards away from completing this set now I'd have told you you were crazy.  Last year at this time I only had 15 cards from this set.  But I bought a bunch of cards from the set from Rob Fitts in another Ebay lot and picked up another bunch of cards via a trade with a Marines fan named Takashi in Japan and now I have over 200!

I mentioned earlier that I needed to get my want lists together soon.  There's a reason for that - I am finally making another trip to Japan soon.  I'll be heading over in late May for a little over two weeks.  I'm hoping to catch a lot of baseball games and go to a lot of baseball card stores.  It'd be great if I could come back from the trip with some of these projects completed.  Of course, I'm sure I'll be finding new projects while I'm there!