Japanese Cards From Korea

I bought some Japanese cards from my friend Dan - aka Korean Cardboard - a few weeks back and the package got delivered to my house yesterday.  I thought I'd do a quick post on what I got from him.

First up is a handful of cards from the 1997 BBM Diamond Heroes set.  Diamond Heroes was the first iteration of BBM's high end set that they later changed the name to "Touch The Game" and then "Genesis".  I'm not a huge fan of these sets as they're usually shiny cards that I find pretty unattractive.  The 1997 set is an exception though as I think it's not a bad design on the front (although it doesn't scan well) and the backs have a nice big photo that's different from the one on the front.  Here's the front and back of one the cards I got from Dan as an example:

I got six cards from this set from Dan.  Most of them were for favorite players but there were two foreign players - Bob MacDonald and Reed Secrist - who I didn't already have cards of.  I should probably do some research some time and see how often there were players who were in BBM's high end sets that weren't in their flagship sets.  Here's the other five cards I got from Dan:

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #131

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #265

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #269

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #65

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #218

Dan has a large PC for Lee Seung-yeop, the Samsung Lions slugger who spent several seasons in Japan playing for the Marines, Giants and Buffaloes.  There's been several times where he's picked up a batch of team issued cards for the Giants because it had a Lee card in it and sent me most of the non-Lee cards and this was one of those times.  The cards were from two separate Giants sets - one from 2007 and one from 2008.

The 2007 cards kind of appear to be a gold facsimile signature parallel version of a set Dan had sent me a few years back.  The fronts are identical except for the gold facsimile signature and the backs are the same except for some promo material on the lower part of the card:

Dan's entered both sets at the Trading Card Database.  The "original" set is simply labeled "2007 Yomiuri Giants Giants 2007" while the other is "2007 Yomiuri Giants Players Day Promo".  He sent me four cards total from this set - here are the other three:

One interesting side not here - Tani is not listed in the checklist of the original "2007 Yomiuri Giants Giants 2007" set which nakes it odd that it would be in the "Player's Day" version.  Dan and I have assumed that there were only 54 cards in the original set but it's entirely possible that we're incorrect about that.  In fact, now that I think about it, it's pretty unlikely that teh set is that small.  What are the chances that the set includes four ikusei players but not Tani or Hayato Sakamoto?  I suspect that it's really a "comprehensive" team set and there are cards for every player on the 70 man roster plus the development players.  Which means the set likely really has around 70-ish cards.

Dan has dubbed the 2008 set the "Giants Special Edition" set based on the text on the front of the cards.  Here's what they look like:

That "2007 Champions" logo reflects the team winning the Central League pennant in 2007.  They lost to the Dragons in the first ever Central League Climax Series that year and Chunichi went on to win their first Nippon Series championship in 53 years.  But, sure, Giants, you're the 2007 "champions".

Thanks for the cards, Dan!  As always it was a pleasure doing business with you.