I was greeted upon my return home from work one day last week with a package from Kenny - aka Zippy Zappy I've been the beneficiary of Kenny's generosity a number of times over the past few years and it's continued even though he's now moved to Japan. I don't know what I've done to make him so nice to me - we've never met in person (although we were both at Rob Fitts' Masanori Murakami event at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan ten years ago) - but I'm always grateful for whatever goodies he decides to send my way.
I'm also always amazed at how he manages to send me stuff I don't already have. I mean, I have a LOT of Japanese baseball cards. Like, over 80 thousand. So for him to send me 50-ish cards and there only be eight that I don't already have is unbelievable. I thought I'd do a...well, I was going to say "quick post to show some of the cards he sent" but with almost 40 cards to talk about, it probably won't be all that quick. So let's dive into what he sent (although I'm skipping the cards he sent that I already have):
First up are some cards of the late Shigeru Sugishita. This first card is from the 2000 DigiCube set which is pretty rare - I've only seen a handful of singles from it (and one of them was this one when Kenny posted about it):
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| 2000 DigiCube #118 |
Here's a couple inserts from the 2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary set:
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| 2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #DB1 |
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| 2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #DR6 |
These next two cards are parallel versions of insert cards from the 2016 BBM Dragons 80th Anniversary and 2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 respectively. I have the base version of each card. Both cards are serially numbered with the "Dragons Heroes" card being /100 and the "Team Records" card being /120:
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| 2016 BBM Dragons 80th Anniversary #DH01 |
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| 2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #TR7 |
The "Dragons Heroes" card has a shiny "kira" finish that doesn't scan well. The last Sugishita card is another one that unfortunately doesn't scan well. It's a "shadow box" card from the 2015 Epoch MVP Of The Year set.
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| 2015 Epoch MVP Of The Year #S-DSS |
It's hard to tell from the scan but the card is hollow with the white background being the back of the card and the photo and facsimile signature being on a transparent front of the card. The card is /10.
This next batch of cards come from various Epoch and BBM sets. Here's another card with a shiny "kira" finish that doesn't scan well - a kira parallel version of a "Ceremonial First Pitch" card of Nozomi Sasaki from the 2015 BBM 2nd Version set. Once again, I have the base version of this card:
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| 2015 BBM 2nd Version # |
A 2018 Epoch One card of Masami Ishigaki, commemorating his winning the MVP at the 2018 Fresh All Star game (the farm team all star game):
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| 2018 Epoch One #387/CD-043 |
A "Printed Signature" insert card of Hiroto Takahashi from the 2023 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition set (/70):
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| 2023 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition #PV01 |
Here's a couple numbered parallel versions of insert cards from BBM Dragons' team sets. The "Boost Phase" card of Shinnosuke Ogasawara is from 2020 and is /150 while the "D's Legacy" card of Masahiko Morino and Akira Neo is from 2022 and is /70:
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| 2020 BBM Dragons #BP1 |
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| 2022 BBM Dragons #DL4 |
That 2022 card doesn't scan well - it looks a lot nicer in person.
One of Kenny's favorite players is Hiroki Kuroda so it was no surprise to see this card in the lot (another shiny card that doesn't scan well):
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| 1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #83 |
Here's an insert and a parallel card from two different BBM sets from 2010:
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| 2010 BBM 1st Version #GG08 |
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| 2010 BBM Giants #G062 |
Kenny included a brand new Dragons Starter Deck from the 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order collectible card game set. Like the Lions one I got last May, the set contains 12 unique playing cards but has three copies of each card. There's also six (five unique) photo-less "Tactics" cards, a "team" card and five identical "time" cards showing the team logo. The sticker price on the front of the set was only 440 yen rather than the 1500 yen I paid for the Lions set. Here's a couple of the cards from the set - the Shinnosuke Ogasawara card was the "cover" card for the set and has a foil finish with gold embossed text:
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| 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D01 Shinnosuke Ogasawara |
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| 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D03 Raidel Martinez |
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| 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D10 Seiya Hosokawa |
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| 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D09 Ryuku Tsuchida |
Moving onto some more interesting fare...Kenny threw in a couple memorabilia cards:
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| 2009 BBM Dragons #DM2 |
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| 2013 Dragons #DM2 |
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| 2017 BBM Genesis |
The Morino and Ogasawara cards are /300 while the Ohsima card is /200.
The remaining cards are all autographed cards, the bulk of which are from various Dragons team sets - both "comprehensive" and smaller box sets - from BBM:
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| 2010 BBM Dragons |
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| 2015 BBM Dragons |
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| 2015 BBM Dragons Autographed Edition |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons |
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| 2016 BBM Dragons Dash |
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| 2019 BBM Dragons |
All of the BBM Dragons autographed cards are /60 except Takuya Kinoshita which is /50. The two Takeshi Kaneko autographed cards are /30. It's kind of funny* that Kenny ended up with the same player as the premium card for both box sets, especially since Kaneko doesn't appear in either base set.
*Kenny might not have thought it was funny after spending all the money on an unopened box set
There was also an autographed card from an Epoch set:
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| 2022 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition #AA-03 |
As you can tell, this card was /17. This and all the BBM autographed cards are sticker autographs.
The last autographed cards that Kenny sent were ones that he got signed TTM. Here are three for Gosuke Katoh when he was a Yankees farmhand:
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| 2013 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects - Chrome Draft Picks #BDPP37 |
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| 2014 Bowman - Prospects #BP56 |
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| 2014 Grandstand Charleston RiverDogs |
The final card needs a little backstory. In 2013, pitcher Takumi Numata dropped out of Nagoya Sangyo University to play for a club team called the Edion Aiko University OB BLITZ. By the end of the season, however, he had signed a contract to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He spent all of 2014 with Dodger's rookie league team in Arizona and was assigned to the Ogden Raptors of the short season Pioneer League the following year. He was released by the team before the season started and returned to Japan. He spend a couple years in the independent Baseball Challenge League (two with Gunma and one with Ishikawa) before being taken by the Swallows in the 2017 draft. Yakult released him after two seasons and he retired as a baseball player after one year with the Ryukyu Blue Oceans.
Kenny had found an on-line image of a 1987-ish Topps card of Numata and printed it out. Numata signed the card via a TTM request:
Thank you again, Kenny, for all the cards!
6 comments:
Glad there were some cards you could use in that lot. The Kaneko autographs were both singles so fortunately I didn't have the opportunity to get him via the boxes. But I did feel a bit of overlap when sorting through my collection (only to give up both anyway).
Love how different kanji sigs look and how they prompt different designs for the autograph cards. And Katoh is a blast from the past for me. He as a bit of a fan favorite when he was in Trenton.
Great stuff from Kenny! That First Pitch card of Nozomi Sasaki is really cool... but those two mascot autographs are my favorites of the bunch.
I now have seven cards of Kaneko, five base cards and two autographs. He was only with the Dragons for three years so I just need a 2017 autograph for him to complete the trifecta!
It's hard enough trying to decipher English signatures - kanji ones are impossible for me. I honestly didn't pay a lot of attention to Katoh when he was in North America since I don't follow MLB very closely anymore but him ending up in Japan was interesting. Waiting for Lars Nootbaar to make the move someday
I need to get a Doala autograph now
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