Topps Japan is now offering Topps Now cards for NPB. They've got seven cards currently up on their website featuring events from the first couple weeks of the season. The cards are 1243 yen a piece (about $8) although there are volume discounts if you're buying multiple copies of the same card (although there is no bundle for all seven cards available). Unlike the MLB version of Topps Now, the NPB cards are on sale for a week. I guess we'll see if Topps will offer new cards every day or if it'll be a weekly offering (or some other interval).
It appears that Topps will not ship these cards overseas. I suspect there's something in their NPB license prohibiting them from doing so as they also wouldn't ship the Tigers Championship set overseas but will do so with the Samurai Japan cards.
I'm mildly surprised that Topps appears to have made a little bit of effort on the cards backs. There's text in both Japanese and English describing what's happening on the card and it's not simply a repeat of the text on the front. Granted it's not a paragraph like the MLB Topps Now cards have but at least it's not just listing when and where the game happened without even giving the score like the Topps Now Samurai Japan cards have had.
I'm going to be curious which teams they end up doing Topps Now cards for. There's only four teams represented in the first batch of cards - two Eagles, two Tigers, two Lions and a Dragon. Will they do cards for more teams? Will they do cards for teams that Epoch isn't doing Epoch One cards for (which would be the Carp and Buffaloes)? I'll also be curious to see what events get featured on the cards. So far, the events on five of the seven Topps Now cards were also featured on Epoch One cards. Since Epoch is somewhat slow in their rollout of Epoch One cards, it's possible the other two will be represented as well.
I guess the big question is whether there's a big enough demand for "on demand" NPB cards for both Epoch and Topps to be doing them. Given that Epoch One cards are only 500 yen, less than half the price of the Topps Now cards and so far are covering the same events, it's hard to see why anyone would want the Topps cards.
10 comments:
I'm not doing it. Someone else can do these. Besides, Epoch already has a 200+ card head start.
I was counting on you to tell me why there's no card #3!
On looking them over I think its a bit generous to say they put even a bit of effort into the backs, they just contain a one line description of the event on the front of the card.
I don't know if its because I'm too old or too young, but I have a lot of trouble understanding the logic of people paying this kind of money for cards that look like they come from a base set (or even ones that don't look like they come from a base set).
Well, nothing in this hobby makes much sense I suppose, but still....
A big rule of thumb for almost anything card related in Japan is if resellers can make money, if the answer to that is yes then there will always be a market. In this case it might be/probably is the parallels doing the heavy lifting.
Was hoping for a watarai, I got one of his epoch one cards so a topps now woulda been nice.
@Sean - My point was that even the single line of text was more than any of their Samurai Japan Topps Now cards had. So it's a little bit of effort. Slightly more than doing nothing but only barely.
@Zippy Zappy - Yeah, I didn't think about the draw of numbered parallels.
@Anonymous - We'll have to wait and see if they end up doing Baystars cards as well.
For what it's worth, #3 has been added. Hotaka Yamakawa.
I broke down and added the initial 8 cards, but then didn't keep up with them. In their usual effort to be unhelpful, Topps takes the cards off their site once they are finished, so now I have a huge gap between 8-35. Anyone have a resource?
I did not. I did notice that at times they still seemed to keep skipping numbers but I didn't pay enough attention to see if they always ended up filling the gaps.
I'd suggest just checking the auction sites but as far as I can tell, Topps hasn't actually published any of these cards yet. I'm going to be looking for this one as I was at this game (and there wasn't an Epoch One card for it) but I didn't feel like paying 1800 yen for it. I'm hoping it'll be cheaper on the secondary market, assuming it ever shows up there.
I figured it out. You can search the site by the catalog number:
https://jp.topps.com/catalogsearch/result?q=ARTNPB-16C2S-24TN-0XXX
Just replace the XXX with the actual card number.
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