Mailday!

My wife and I were out of town for a week's vacation and when we got home yesterday (well, late Wednesday night actually), I had two packages from friends waiting for me.  I thought I'd get back into the swing of posting by doing a quick one about the cards I got.

First up is a package from Jason.  He asked me a few weeks back if I was interested in a particular card he had.  I said yes and then found another three that he was selling on Ebay that I also wanted.  He named a price, I sent him the money and he sent me the cards along with some bonus goodies.  Here's the first half of the cards that I knew I was getting:

2023 Epoch Swallows Premier Edition #AA-MI

2023 BBM Genesis

That Ishikawa auto has a nice print run!

I spend a lot of time beating on Topps' NPB sets so it's kind of odd that I'm working on a project with them.  I've decided that I want to try to get a "stadium background" parallel card from the 2023 206 set for all twelve teams.  The card Jason had initially offered me was Koji Chikamoto with Koshien Stadium in the background and he also had a Kazuma Okamoto card with the Tokyo Dome:

2023 Topps 206 #107

2023 Topps 206 #130

With these two, I'm now halfway there.  I have the Tigers, Carp, Buffaloes, Lions, Eagles and Giants so I still need the Marines, Dragons, Hawks, Fighters, Swallows and Baystars.

I mentioned that Jason had thrown in a bunch of extra cards.  I'll group them in two groups.  First there were a random bunch of 2022 and 2023 Epoch cards:

2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #101

2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #004

2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #048

2023 Epoch Carp Premier Edition #38

2023 Epoch Buffaloes Premier Edition #01

2023 Epoch Buffaloes Premier Edition #15

2023 Epoch Buffaloes Premier Edition #40

That Norichika Aoki card is a parallel but I don't know which of the several the set had it is.

Lastly there were a bunch of the tobacco-sized Topps 206 cards - Jason is attempting to complete the set so he sent me a handful of his extras:

2023 Topps 206 #50 mini

2023 Topps 206 #100 mini

2023 Topps 206 #154 mini

2023 Topps 206 #172 mini

2023 Topps 206 #197 mini

2023 Topps 206 #126 mini

2023 Topps 206 #118 mini

2023 Topps 206 #77 mini

2023 Topps 206 #38 mini

2023 Topps 206 #32 mini

2023 Topps 206 #13 mini

The other package I got was from Dan, aka Korean Cardboard.  I had bought some 1997 BBM Diamond Heroes cards from Dan a few months back and they sent me down a rabbit hole trying to determine which players appeared in Diamond Heroes (and Touch The Game and Genesis) but not in the corresponding year's flagship set(s).  I had decided that I wanted about a third of all the cards I had identified - mostly foreign players - and I knew Dan had a bunch of Diamond Heroes cards he was looking to get rid off so I sent my list off to him.  He ultimately had eight of the cards I was looking for so I sent him some money and he sent me these cards:

1998 BBM Diamond Heroes #108 (Samson Lee)

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #190 (Rodney Pedraza)

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #159 (Sherman Obando)

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #136 (Alan Zinter)

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #57 (Domingo Martinez)

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #236 (Jason Hardtke)

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #209 (Salvatre Urso)

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #107 (Bob Wolcott)

As far as I can tell, these are the only NPB cards for Zinter and Urso.  Lee, Pedraza and Obando all had cards in subsequent years (Pedraza was also in BBM's All Star and Nippon Series sets in 1999) while Domingo Martinez had cards in previous years (with the Lions), subsequent years (with the Giants) and the 1999 Calbee set as well as the BBM Giants team set distributed by the Yomiuri Shinbum.  Hardtke and Wolcott appeared in other NPB sets in 2000.  (I remember seeing both Zinter and Obando in the Mets and Yankees farm systems respectively in the early 90's so it's fun getting Japanese cards of them.)

Thanks to Jason and Dan for the cards!