2022 JABA Player Cards

On Tuesday of this week I received my roughly annual big box of Japanese baseball cards that my friend Ryan has picked up for me in Japan.  This year's box contained over ten pounds of cards so I've got quite a lot of stuff to keep me busy for a few weeks.

The problem I always run into when I get this much stuff is figuring out where to start.  I usually dither for a couple of days before basically just shrugging, picking something and digging in.  This time around I've decided to start with the 2022 JABA Player cards.

JABA is the organization that runs the corporate (or industial) leagues in Japan.  I think it stands for "Japanese Amateur Baseball Association" but that's just a guess.  They issued a 90 card set of players from various teams in 2021 and followed that up with an 88 card set last year.  The cards were issued in packs of five cards which sold for 550 yen on JABA's on-line store (which appears to be gone now).  Ryan had picked me up two packs for the 2021 set which I received in last year's box.  I liked them so much I asked him to pick up three packs for the 2022 set.

The cards are very attractive with almost borderless photos (there's a thin blue border on the bottom) and rounded corners.  The player's name in English appears on the front with his uniform number while the backs feature a head shot and some biographical information - all in Japanese.  The card numbers are on the front of the card but not the back.  Here's all 15 cards I got:

Here's what the backs look like (this is Kei Kawano, card #22JP014):

I was kind of amused that I got cards of two players that I also had in the 2021 set - Kawano and Kawase.  Kawano is the only player of this batch who has since gone "professional" - he was drafted by the Carp in the fifth round of the 2022 draft.  One of the other players, Ryosuke Aizawa, appears in the Samurai Japan collegiate team cards from the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.

I'd love to see a checklist for both this set and its predecessor.  I'd love to get more cards but they seem to be somewhat scarce.  I haven't found them on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and the ones on Mercari are pricier than I want to spend.