Monday, March 22, 2021

2020 BBM Giants "The Tokyo Culture" inserts

Every year since the last 00's BBM has included a group of "Giants Pride" cards with their Giants "comprehensive" team set.  It started out as a subset in the base set but since BBM standardized the size of the base sets of their team sets at 81 cards in 2015 it has been an insert set.  (These are not to be confused with the "Giants Pride" sets that are issued by the team itself.)  Typically the "Giants Pride" cards show posed shots of the players in front of a solid colored backdrop or somewhere around Tokyo Dome.  They're fairly attractive but a bit monotonous after a while.

But last year BBM and the Giants did something a little different for the "Giants Pride" cards.  The cards featured images of players (and manager Tatsunori Hara) superimposed over various scenes of Tokyo.  Actually "over" isn't the right word - their images were inserted into the scenes, making them appear to be actual Giants standing astride the city.  The set was subtitled "The Tokyo Culture".

I was so taken by these cards that I asked Ryan to pick the entire set up for me.  He ended up getting me a Giants "master" set - the complete base set along with all the non-serially numbered insert sets - which included all nine of these cards.  The cards all have a metallic silver border on the front which my scanner has some issues with.  The images on the front of the card feature a "close up" of the player while the image on the back of the card shows the full image.  Here's the front and back of all nine cards:


















I was happy that I was able to identify six of the nine locations although a couple were pretty obvious.  Hara, of course, is at Tokyo Dome.  Takahashi is in front of the Rainbow Bridge while Nakagawa is at Tokyo Station.  Kobayashi is also in front of the Rainbow Bridge with Odaiba Island in the background.  I don't know where Ohshiro or Sumitani are although Mount Fuji can be seen in the distance to the left of Sumitani's left foot.  Sakamoto is obviously at Tokyo Tower.  I don't know where Maru is but Kamei is at Nihonbashi bridge.

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