2018 Konami Baseball Collection

Late last season Konami announced a new collectible card game called "Baseball Collection".  The cards are used in an arcade game - the game rewards players with more cards but I don't know how you get your initial cards.

I've not seen a lot of details on last year's cards but they issued a set for 2019 as well and there's a little more information on line about this year's set.  There are a total of 76 cards for each team - three "P" (Premium?) cards, 13 "SR" (Super Rare?) cards, 30 "R" (Rare?) cards and 30 "N" (Normal?) cards.  There are multiple cards for players - for example Shogo Akiyama of the Lions has a "P", an "SR", a "R" and an "N" card.  In fact it looks like the list of players with "N" cards is the same as the list of players with "R" cards.

Here's the video Konami published for the 2018 cards/game:



And here's the 2019 version:



I'm not sure when the last time Konami had done baseball cards was.  I think the last time they had cards was 2014 but I could be mistaken - I know they had cards in 2013.

I picked up a handful of 2018 cards at Mint Odawara:

#201810-R-C051-00

#201810-N-F016-00

#201810-N-L055-00

#201810-N-L016-00

#201810-R-G019-00

If it's not obvious, the Suzuki and Sugano cards are "R" cards while the other cards are "N".

One thing I discovered on this trip (which Ryan had hinted at before) is there's a separation between the Konami and Bandai game cards and the rest of the Japanese card collecting world.  It is extremely rare to find game cards at a baseball card store - they are sold at game card stores.  The only place other than Mint Odawara that I saw any Konami cards at was Mint Ikebukuro's gaming store the gaming store next door to Mint Ikebukuro's second story shop. ("Mint Ikebukuro" can actually mean any of three two separate stores - a "high end" card store, a gaming store and a card store.  The "high end" store is on the first floor while the other two stores are across the hall from each other on the second floor).  I had stepped into the store looking for 2009 Konami WBC Heroes cards and saw a bunch of the Baseball Collection cards in a display case.  I feel kind of stupid - I was focused on the WBC cards and I didn't think to pick up a couple of 2019 cards.

12/6/19 UPDATE - I was incorrect in assuming that the gaming card store was part of Mint Ikebukuro.  It is not although I think it might have been at one point.