Monday, July 21, 2025
Latest From "When Topps Had Balls"
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist and Price Guide Vintage Edition 4.0
Card Of The Week July 20
Last Thursday night the Hawks were hosting the Marines at Kitakyushu Municipal Stadium. This was one of NPB's "countryside" games where teams will play at ballparks other than their normal homes to promote baseball in areas that don't necessarily have easy access to it. Kitakyushu is about 40 miles northeast of the Hawks' home in Fukuoka.
The game was tied 2-2 going into the top of the sixth inning. With nobody out and a runner on first, Marines first baseman Kyuto Ueda untied it with his first career home run:
Or it would have been his first career home run had nature not intervened. There was a lot of rain in western Japan that day. The Tigers and Buffaloes (who were playing in Kobe instead of Osaka Dome) were both rained out and the Baystars-Carp game in Hiroshima was called after six innings as a 1-1 tie. In Kitakyushu, the rain started falling harder as the Marines extended their lead to 6-2 in the top of the sixth. The umpires eventually halted play and ultimately determined that it was going to be impossible to complete the game. Which meant that the score needed to revert to the last completed inning, erasing the Marines' four run lead as well as Ueda's home run (which is now being referred to as a "phantom" home run).
Here's Ueda's 2024 BBM 1st Version rookie card (#212):
Friday, July 18, 2025
A Brief History Of NPB Collectible Card Games - Part 1 - Takara
I've been meaning to sit down and do a post about the history of collectible game cards for NPB for over a year now and I've realized that a comprehensive history is much bigger than I really want to do. There are game card sets featuring pro baseball players going back to the late 1940's. The third edition of Gary Engel's Vintage "Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist And Price Guide" has 30-ish pages of listings of game card sets, including ten pages for Karuta card sets.
I'm going to tackle a slightly less ambitious goal - listing the major Collectible Card Games for NPB for the past 40-50 years. There's basically been five different manufacturers - Takara, Konami, Future Bee, Bandai and Bushiroad. Konami actually did cards over two separate time periods.
I've been working on this subject for a while now and I was originally intending to do it all in one post. I realized, however, that the amount of cards I want to show will make it way too big of a post so I'm going to break it up into three posts - one for Takara, one for Konami and one for the other three companies.
I do need to be up front that I'm not really a big fan of most of these cards. I generally find the cards to be ugly with the fronts of the cards getting cluttered with the game features. The checklists of a lot of the sets (especially the Konami ones) are very confusing as well. I've also never learned to play any of these games. So these probably won't be as informative posts than than they could have been. But let's get started...
From 1978 to 1998, Takara produced 30 card team sets in boxes that also included a team logo card, a pair of dice and a paper playing field to be used as a game board. They only produced sets for the six Central League teams for their first three years but they expanded to do all twelve teams starting in 1981. The photos on the cards were pretty much all portraits (or "mug shots" as I usually call them) up until 1991 when they started adding a variety of photos (probably in response to BBM starting up).
I should point out that the 30 cards were of 30 distinct players which meant that many more players were represented in the Takara sets than any other baseball card set in Japan in the pre-BBM years. This means that there's a number of reasonably big players like Hideki Irabu, Motonobu Tanishige, Satoshi Nakajima and Hideo Nomo whose first baseball cards were in Takara sets. Actually since Calbee didn't have any cards of Lotte players until 1985, the 1981 Lotte Orions set contains the very first card of Hiromitsu Ochiai. Takara sets from the 1980's also contain the only contemporary cards of a number of American players including Don Money, Rich Duran, Steve Shirley and Danny Goodwin (only player ever taken as the overall number one pick twice).
The sets in 1997 and 1998 also included the team's managers so there were 31 cards in those sets.
One interesting thing about the cards is that from 1979 to 1987, they displayed the Showa Era year rather than the Western year. It's kind of odd that they started displaying the Western year in 1988, the final year of the Showa Era (although they didn't know that then). The birthdates of the players on the front of the cards give the year in the Showa Era, even on the cards from 1988 and later. (And in case you're wondering, the 1978 cards didn't display a year at all.)
Engel's listings for these sets group all the sets for a year as a single set with a one "Set Value" for the full group of all 12 (or 6) teams. My gut feeling is that nobody thinks of Takara as a 360 card set but rather 12 30 card sets and a "Set Value" for each team set would probably be more useful.
Takara also issued smaller, 20 card boxed sets in 1984 that featured a simpler version of the game, apparently aimed at children. The sets are referred to as the "Takara Kids" sets and the cards are smaller then the regular Takara cards and were printed on a thicker card stock, making them resemble menko cards in some ways.
I did a post a LONG time ago (before I learned how to lay out photos properly) about these cards that included a post from the old Yahoo Japanese Baseball group from 2001 describing how to play the game. I would refer you to that post if you want more information on game play but basically you rolled the dice for each at bat for the player and you looked up the result of the dice roll on the back of the player's card to see what the outcome was.
I don't have cards from every year that Takara did sets but here's a card from every year that I have at least one (plus a Takara Kids card):
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1978 Takara Tigers #31 Masayuki Kakefu |
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1979 Takara Giants #24 Kiyoshi Nakahata |
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1981 Takara Orions #29 Choji Murata |
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1982 Takara Lions #27 Tsutomu Itoh |
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1984 Takara Carp #3 Sachio Kinugasa |
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1984 Takara Kids Giants #7 Reggie Smith |
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1986 Takara Hawks #60 Hiromitsu Kadota |
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1987 Takara Tigers #44 Randy Bass |
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1988 Takara Dragons #6 Hiromitsu Ochiai |
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1989 Takara Whales #1 Motonobu Tanishige |
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1990 Takara Buffaloes #11 Hideo Nomo |
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1991 Takara Swallows #27 Atsuya Furuta |
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1992 Takara Carp #33 Akira Etoh |
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1993 Takara BlueWave #51 Ichiro Suzuki |
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1994 Takara Marines #18 Hideki Irabu |
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1996 Takara Lions #32 Kazuo Matsui |
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1997 Takara Giants #55 Hideki Matsui |
You've probably noticed that the front design on a lot of these cards look similar to each other. Takara used roughly the same design from 1984 to 1995 with the exception of 1988. The 1981 to 1983 sets also used a similar design, as did the 1997 and 1998 sets.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Card Of The Week July 13
Yudai Ohno of the Dragons pitched a complete game against the Carp yesterday, throwing 108 pitches while giving up four hits and only one run. Of course, with this being Chunichi we're talking about, it's not a silly question to ask if the Dragons won the game. They did, by a score of 7-1. Here's Ohno's card from the 2021 BBM 1st Version set (#220):
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. We've got some family visiting this week and I've been doing a bunch of work around the house to get it ready for them. I've also been working on a post off and on for the last month or so that I hope to finally publish in the next few days. And hopefully I'll be getting my latest shipment from Ryan in the next few weeks. So things will probably pick up soon.
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Card Of The Week July 6
Kento Inoue of the Baystars hit his first career home run at the ichi-gun level last Wednesday and he made it count. It was a grand slam off of Dragons' ace Hiroto Takahashi in the bottom of the first that accounted for all of DeNA's runs in their 4-3 victory. Inoue was the 94th player in Japan to hit a grand slam for their first ever home run. Here's Inoue's rookie card from last year's BBM 1st Version set (#081):
Friday, July 4, 2025
Summertime Things
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Twice In A Week
I got Zippy Zapped yet again! I received another envelope in the mail yesterday from Kenny in Japan. This one contained only one baseball card, a DreamOrder card of Akiyoshi Katsuno of the Dragons. This was from last year's Central League Booster Pack Vol. 1 set and is #CBP01-C03. It's also very shiny but it still seems to have scanned pretty well. I assume it's shiny-ness means it's a good card to use in the game but I have not learned how to play it.
So thank you once again for the card, Kenny!
Monday, June 30, 2025
More Cards From Korean Cardboard
I mentioned in the post I had done about some cards I had bought from Dan Skrezyna - aka Korean Cardboard - that Dan had located some more KBO cards from my want list and I'd bought those as well. The package made excellent time crossing the Pacific - Dan told me he shipped the cards last Monday and they showed up today.
I was pretty excited about all of the cards but I think I was the most excited about what objectively is the dullest card in the batch - the unnumbered "Title Card" for the 1999 Teleca Premium "Korea Dream Team" insert set. This was the last card I needed to complete this set. The front of the card has details about the 1999 Asian Championship, a qualifier to the baseball competition for the 2000 Sydney Olympics:
The back of the card has the scores of all the games in the tournament and shows the standings of the final round and the team's overall finishes (Korea won the tournament which is why Teleca did cards for the team):
The rest of the cards were all from the 2000 Teleca set. Dan sent me eleven base set cards and two "Rookies" insert cards. The first of these is arguably the biggest card in the set, at least to MLB fans:
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2000 Teleca #72 |
Here's one of the other base set cards and the two "Rookies" insert cards:
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2000 Teleca #107 |
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2000 Teleca #R15 |
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2000 Teleca #R17 |
The remainder of the cards were all members of the SK Wyverns. I've written about this in the past - I believe that these are all short printed cards that were included in a second printing of the set, replacing the cards of the defunct Ssangbangwool Raiders from the first printing:
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2000 Teleca #195 |
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2000 Teleca #197 |
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2000 Teleca #201 |
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2000 Teleca #202 |
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2000 Teleca #207 |
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2000 Teleca #209 |
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2000 Teleca #210 |
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2000 Teleca #214 |
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2000 Teleca #215 |
With the exception of Son Cha-hoon, all of these players also appear in the set with Ssangbangwool.
The KBO portion of my want list is now down to just 14 cards - one from the 1999 Teleca set, two from the 2000 Teleca base set, five from the 2000 Teleca "Rookies" insert set and six from the 2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set. Thanks, Dan!
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Card Of The Week June 29
Interleague play wrapped up this past week with a makeup game on Tuesday between the Giants and the Marines. The Hawks were the interleague champions for the ninth time (although the first time since 2019). This was the twentieth season of interleague play - it started in 2005 but they didn't have it in the COVID-shortened 2020 season - and the Hawks have had the best record in almost half of those seasons. No other team has won it more than twice.
Hawks outfielder Tatsuru Yanagimachi was named Interleague MVP. Here's a card of him from last year's team issued "2024 Season Vol, 1" set (#24SBH152):
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Zapped Again!
I was away from home this past week on a business trip to Alabama. I managed to do a couple fun things on the trip, like visiting Rickwood Field and having dinner with Jason. I got home late last night after a bit of an odyssey caused by scattered thunderstorms across the south to learn that I had received yet another envelope full of baseball cards from Kenny, aka Zippy Zappy.
There was a bit of a twist, though. The envelopes that I had gotten from Kenny over the past few months had contained baseball cards from this year but this envelope had some nine year old cards in it. What Kenny had sent me was the entire nine card "Enter The Dragon" insert set associated with the 2016 BBM Dragons set. Most of BBM's team sets have 18 non-premium insert cards split into a handful of sets and there's usually a nine card one featuring the main players of the team. This was that insert set for the Dragons set that year. Here's all nine cards:
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#ED1 |
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#ED2 |
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#ED3 |
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#ED4 |
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#ED5 |
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#ED6 |
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#ED7 |
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#ED8 |
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#ED9 |
I've had the base set for the Dragons set since 2016 but, thanks to Kenny, I'm now just six insert cards from a master set. He'd previously given me the three "Fresh Stars" cards so all I need now are the three "Artful Reliever" cards and the three "Powerhouse" cards - although I'm not sure I'm going to pursue this. He's also given me six autographed cards from the set.
Once again, thanks for the cards, Kenny!
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Card Of The Week June 22
Thursday night in Tokyo, Koki Kitayama of the Fighters came close to making history. Pitching against the Giants in the ballpark that Nippon-Ham once shared with Yomiuri, Kitayama took a perfect game into the seventh inning before giving up a two out walk. The no-hitter was still intact but, sadly, both it and his shutout ended with one out in the ninth inning on a solo home run by Takumi Ohshiro. Kitayama had to settle for a complete game, one-hit victory as the Fighters beat the Giants 4-1.
Here's a card of Kitayama from last year's 2nd Version set (#370):