I got home from work yesterday to discover a surprise package waiting for me from the "Kyle Freeland Fan Club" which I pretty quickly realized was
Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy). This isn't the first time I've been the beneficiary of Kenny's generosity and I'm always thankful for whatever he sees fit to send my way.
Now, I have a lot of Japanese baseball cards. So it was really impressive that Kenny managed to give me 200-ish cards that I mostly didn't already have. I'm not going to show all the cards here but I thought I'd hit some of the highlights.
First off, he gave me two complete sets. First up is the 81 card 2017 BBM Dragons team set:
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| 2017 BBM Dragons #01 |
The other complete set was this 27 card 2015 Dragons Autographed Edition (which
Jambalaya has labeled something that translates as "Dragon of Counterattack"):
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| 2015 BBM Dragons Autographed Edition #01 |
There were a couple serially numbered parallels from recent BBM flagship sets:
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| 2022 BBM 2nd Version #458 |
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| 2023 BBM 1st Version #323 |
Inserts from some recent BBM Dragons team sets - the two "Dragonheart" ones are serially numbered parallels:
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| 2018 BBM Dragons "Raise High" #RH9 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons "Dragonheart" #DH8 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons "Dragonheart" #DH9 |
Some inserts from other BBM sets:
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| 2016 BBM Masterpiece "Superstar" #SS08 |
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| 2016 BBM Fusion "Great Record" #GR22 |
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| 2018 BBM Rookie Edition "Rookie Of The Year" #RY2 |
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| 2023 BBM Rookie Edition "Close Relationship" #CL6 |
The "Close Relationship" of those four players is they all attended Asia University.
Some BBM Genesis cards - the Shuhei Takahashi card is a serially numbered parallel:
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| 2021 BBM Genesis #077 |
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| 2022 BBM Genesis #039 |
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| 2022 BBM Genesis #045 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons History "Dream Team" #DT03 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons History "Dream Team" #DT09 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons History "Team Records" #TR6 |
A bunch of parallels. Three of these were from card shows in Higashi Betsuin which I think is an area in Nagoya. My bet is that the shows were held at Higashi-Betsuin Kaikan Hall. The Noguchi promo is interesting as the actual "Prime Time Player" cards from
the 2002 1st Version set were lenticular. The 2011 Rookie Edition images are from a two sided card with Ohno on one side and Yamashita on the other.
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| 2002 BBM 1st Version "Prime Time Player" Promo |
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| 2004 BBM Dragons Promo |
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| 2006 BBM Dragons Card Show Promo |
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| 2010 BBM Dragons Card Show Promo |
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| 2011 BBM Rookie Edition Card Show Promo |
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| 2011 BBM Rookie Edition Card Show Promo |
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| 2018 BBM 2nd Version Book Store Promo #BS11 |
Not all of the cards were from BBM. Here's a couple 2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection cards:
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| 2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #040 |
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| 2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #039 |
A couple of cards from Epoch's various Dragons sets over recent years:
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| 2017 Epoch Dragons #PS-02 (Printed Signature Parallel) |
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| 2018 Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars #65 |
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| 2022 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition "Metal Power" #MP-13 |
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| 2022 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition "Metal Power" #MP-06 |
The two "Metal Power" inserts are serially numbered.
The last batch of cards I'm going to show are all from Topps. Here's a 2021 Topps Chrome card:
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| 2021 Topps NPB Chrome #43 |
Some Bowman's from last year. The first two are Chrome while the others are serially numbered purple parallels:
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| 2022 Bowman NPB Chrome #BP-5 |
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| 2022 Bowman NPB Chrome #66 |
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| 2022 Bowman NPB #92 |
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| 2022 Bowman NPB #21 |
During his trip, Kenny picked up a pack of 2023 Bowman NPB and opened it. He ended up sending all nine cards from the pack to me. Here's four of them:
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| 2023 Bowman NPB #25 |
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| 2023 Bowman NPB #94 |
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| 2023 Bowman NPB Chrome #95 |
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| 2023 Bowman NPB #BP-39 |
The most interesting thing in the package wasn't the cards though. It was this:
This is a Shikishi or "Autograph Board" featuring the signature of Masataka Iryo of the Dragons. (H/T to the note Kenny put on it!) It's quite large - about 11 inches high and 9 1/2 inches wide - so I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I might frame it along with a card of Iryo. But that's a good problem to have.
So thanks, Kenny, for sending me all this. I know you said you don't want anything in return but I'll have to figure out some way to repay you.
3 comments:
The shikishi is very cool. I'd kind of love to see an explainer of the difference in autograph collecting in Japan vs the US. Also the Bowman NPB cards look a lot nicer than the Topps NPB cards. Though the fact that you didn't show backs makes me think that there's still minimal effort being done there.
"Dragon of Counterattack" sounds like trash, they should've gone with Comeback Dragons. Snappier.
Glad you liked the cards. I'm seriously fine on a return, because I'm going to continue to downsize. Just knowing I have places I can send cards I don't want anymore is enough.
@Nick Vossbrink - Still minimal effort although they managed to have a little less blank space. I'll be doing a post soon about Topps' latest three NPB sets and I'll show the back there
@Zippy Zappy - Thanks again and I'm happy to take whatever you want to get rid of
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