Sunday, March 8, 2020

2018 Meito Central League Home Run Ice Cream Cards

Back in 2018 the confectionary company Meito gave away baseball cards with boxes of their "Central League Home Run Ice Cream" products.  There were 36 cards in all and - as you might assume from the product name - they only featured players from the Central League.  My suspicion is that there were six cards for each team but I don't know that for sure.

I knew these cards existed (Zippy Zappy had tipped me off when they came out) but I don't think I'd ever seen any of them.  I had done some searches for them on Yahoo! Japan Auctions but never found them.  I looked around some in stores in Japan last year but came up empty then as well.

Fast forward to yesterday when I'm going through the box of stuff Ryan had sent me and I discover some cards that I didn't recognize.  It took me a little bit before I recognized the logo on the cards was the same as Meito's - Ryan had sent me five of the cards.  Here's what they look like:

#01

#17

#25

#29

#32
Here's what the backs look like:

#01
Unlike some of the other recent food issues, these don't appear to have been made by either BBM or Epoch.

10 comments:

Zippy Zappy said...

I'm guessing these are less-shinier than the EPOCH gum cards.

NPB Card Guy said...

Much less shiny. I like these better than those.

Sean said...

Oh those are cool, I see Home Run Bars in the supermarket all the time but have never seen them with actual baseball cards. I'll have to pay more attention in case they put them out again.

SumoMenkoMan said...

Cool, definitely something different!

Ryan G said...

I'm a little late in replying, but...

I'm glad you like them, and I didn't know you didn't have any! I picked them up in a lot last year (I think - or maybe even in 2018) and forgot about them since that was probably when I was in Sapporo.

RunForeKelloggs said...

Great site. Do you have any information on the Kellogg's cards issued in Japan?

NPB Card Guy said...

Thanks! I don't know a whole lot about them as they're cards for MLB players and therefore not as interesting to me. AFIK there are three sets - two ten card sets issued by Upper Deck in 2007 and 2008 and a six card set issued by Topps in 2010. I don't know how common or how expensive they would be. I did a quick search on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and found 12 listings for single cards with prices between 49 and 1000 yen. I couldn't tell you if any of them sell for those prices.

Jason Presley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jason Presley said...

https://www.tcdb.com/Checklist.cfm/sid/289933

Almost done with the checklist. Was there a foil version of these? On Mercari, there is a lot of cards listed with what looks like a foil version of the Yuhei Nakamura card.

NPB Card Guy said...

@Jason - no idea. At this point, you're probably the expert on this set. All I know is what I've posted here.