More Cards From Suruga-ya

I placed another order with Suruga-ya, the online store that several people had told me about over the years but I never tried until last month.  I wanted to do a quick post about most of the cards I got - I'll be doing a separate post about part of the rest of the order tomorrow.

The theme of this post unfortunately is "cards that look better in real life than scanned".  A bunch of these cards are either shiny, have a "kira" finish or in one case are a 3-D card and as a result they don't look as good as they would in person.

Case in point - this shiny gold insert card from the 2020 BBM Rookie Edition set commemorating Munetaka Murakami's 2019 Central League Rookie Of The Year award.  It's not really as dark as it looks here.

2020 BBM Rookie Edition #RY2

The scan of this 2009 Calbee card celebrating Kazuhiro Kiyohara's retirement makes it look like it's snowing:

2009 calbee #KSP-2

But the scan of this 2015 Bandai Owners League 04 card of Seiya Suzuki looks pretty good:

2015 Bandai Owners League 04 #084

Speaking of Seiya Suzuki, I picked up one of the 3-D "Great Heroes" insert cards from the 2017 Carp "Successful Achievement" set featuring him and Yoshihiro Maru.  Obviously this is yet another card that looks better in person:

I don't usually pay a lot of attention to TIC (or "Hits" or "216 Co., Ltd.") but I thought that this card of Shota Imanaga from their 2020 Baystars "Used Ball Card Series" set was too good looking to pass up:

2020 TIC Baystars "Used Ball Card Series" #39

I picked up two of the three "Kamagaya Rookies" subset cards from the 2012 BBM Fighters set - the other one is Kensuke Kondoh which may explain why it wasn't available at Suruga-ya - I need to add it to my wantlist:

2012 BBM Fighters #F72

2012 BBM Fighters #F71

While we're on the Fighters, I picked up a couple more of their team issued cards from 2022 - I had gotten a card of Kondoh from this set in my previous order.  It's difficult to tell from the scan but the Sugiura card is an insert or parallel and features a "kira" finish:

Lastly I picked up a handful of cards from the Eagles team issued sets.  First up are a couple of base cards from sets that I didn't have any cards from - the 2021 2nd Version and the 2022 1st Version sets:

2021 Eagles Team Set 2nd Version #75

2022 Eagles Team Set 1st Version #01

Next is what I think is an insert from the 2013 Eagles team set (called "Heat" that year) featuring a player who had a pretty good season that year.  This is yet another card that looks better in person - the lettering on this card is in gold foil which looks black in the scan:

2013 Eagles Heat #SS1-01

This is a die-cut insert from the 2020 Eagles 1st Version set that commemorates Jabari Blash hitting the 50,000th home run in Pacific League history during the 2019 season:

2020 Eagles 1st Version #IN1-7P

Here's a "Game Used Jersey" card for Ginji (Akaminai) from the 2016 Eagle team set (serially numbered to 220):

2016 Eagles Team Set #J2

Finally here's an autograph card from the 2020 Eagles 1st Version set for Ko Shimozuru (serially numbered to 40).  Once again this looks MUCH better in person - the background for the autograph is a shiny silver square and the scan looks terrible:

2020 Eagles 1st Version #AG27

I didn't list the prices for these cards like I did in the post for my first order but they were all pretty cheap.  The most expensive cards were the Fighters team-issued Uwasawa card and the Shimozuru autograph - both cards were 480 yen each.  Most of the other cards (including the Ginji Jersey card) were in the 210-220 yen range.  I was particularly happy to get the Murakami card for 220 yen as I had been contemplating buying it on COMC for around $10.

Despite placing a second order with them, I'm still not a huge fan of Suruga-ya.  I'm getting better at searching it but it still seems very difficult to browse the cards.  And I'd still prefer a cheaper shipping option.