Japanese Baseball Cards: A Brief History Of NPB Collectible Card Games - Part 2

Saturday, July 26, 2025

A Brief History Of NPB Collectible Card Games - Part 2 - Konami

Konami did collectible game cards for NPB for the better part of 23 years. They had two separate stints with the first one starting in 2000 and going to either 2013 or 2014 and the second stint running between 2018 and 2022.

Their first set in 2000 - called "Field Of 9" - was a doozy. It contained 1866 base cards and was issued in six series in both 2000 and 2001 (Engel identifies the set as "2000-2001 Konami Field Of 9"). There are also dozens of parallel issues for the cards as well. The card backs were all the same so I assume the game play involved somehow hiding your cards from your opponent. The cards were sold in packs although I think there were "Starter Boxes" available that had 66 cards in them - I know because I had one - but I don't remember if they had packs in them or not.

Back of the Field Of 9 cards

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00B-464

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00T-125

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00T-522 Parallel

Engel's old price guides (before he switch to the "Vintage Editions" that don't cover any sets after 1990) never mentioned it but it appears that there was a "Field Of 9" set in 2002 - or the 2000-01 set continued into 2002. I have one Field Of 9 card with a copyright date and card number that imply that it was from 2002. I believe this is an "SP" parallel version of the card:

2002 Konami Field Of 9 #FON2CA-1938

Konami replaced "Field Of 9" with "Prime Nine" in 2002. All of these cards had the same backs as well. They issued "Prime Nine" sets through 2005 although there appear to have been multiple sets most years, including versions that were sold in team packs. The main 2002 set was sold in three series ("volumes") while the other three were essentially issued in two series (Engel separates the 2004 and 2005 editions into separate "First Edition" and "Second Edition" sets). The really interesting thing about the "Prime Nine" cards is that I believe that they are the only CCG sets that have included memorabilia and/or autographed cards. There were jersey cards available in packs of the 2003 set as well as the "Starter", "All Star" and "Booster" packs for the 2004 set. There were bat cards available in the "Special Team Edition" packs in both 2003 and 2004 and the 2004 packs also included autographs.

I don't have a lot of the Prime Nine cards and most of what I have is from the 2002 set(s). Here's some samples of what I have:

Back of the Prime Nine cards

2002 Konami Prime Nine #PN02T2-113

2002 Konami Prime Nine "Tatics" #PN02T1-TA17

2002 Konami Prime Nine #PN02T2-091 Foil Parallel

2002 Konami Prime Nine Star Card #PN02T2-ST004

2002 Konami Prime Nine VS #PN02T1-VS02

2003 Konami Prime Nine #PN03T1-181 Parallel

2003 Konami Prime Nine Total Results #PN03TA-031 Parallel

2005 Konami Prime Nine Special Team Packs #PN05TE-058

Konami introduced the "Baseball Heroes" line in 2005 and I believe they continued it until they took several years off from from doing baseball games and cards in the mid 2010's, stopping in either 2013 or 2014. These cards were used somehow in a video games although I'm not sure if they were online or in arcades. The big difference with these cards is that there was player information on both sides of the cards. There were a dizzying number of sets issued each year - "White Edition", "Black Edition", "Power Up Version" and "Opening Version" were some examples - and after a while it got hard to keep track of them.

During this time period, Konami also released cards under the name "Powerful Baseball" and "Baseball All Star's" (yes, "Star's" - that's not a typo) but I don't know if there was an associated game with these sets.

What follows here are a bunch of cards I have from various Konami sets from 2005 to 2012. I think I'm only sharing one card from each set that I have represented in my collection but, as I've mentioned before, these sets get very confusing. I'm pretty sure some of these are insert cards. I'm also unsure of some of the set names after 2007 (where Engel's last non-vintage guide left off):

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes New Black Edition #C05B051

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old Black Edition #B05B093

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old White Edition #B05W113

2006 Konami Powerful Baseball #P06-034

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 Black Edition #B06B147

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 White Edition #B06W160

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #B07B064

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 White Edition #B07W009

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Highlights #B07H006

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B08B046

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B08W167

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #C08S017

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B09B082

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #C09B049

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B09W155

2010 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B10RB065

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B11RB135

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B11RW117

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #D11RB113

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Draft #B11DR010

2011 Konami Baseball All Star's #BA1101-062

2012 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B12RB018

2012 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B12RW041

It's probably pretty obvious that I'm not a big fan of Konami's cards but there's one major exception - the 2009 Baseball Heroes WBC Version set. I've said before that this was the best set ever done for a World Baseball Classic. It had a 253 card base set featuring the full rosters of the four semi-finalist teams (Japan, South Korea, the United States and Venezuela) and 12 players from each of the other twelve teams except Panama which only had eight. The set also featured two 12 card insert sets - "All Tournament Team" and "Special" (which featured three players from each of the semi-finalist teams).

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version #W09R095

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version Special #W09S001

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version All Tournament Team #W09A011

Konami also issued a much smaller set for the 2013 WBC but this was only an 11 card insert set featuring players from the Japanese team. I'm not entirely sure but I think this was associated with the "Extra Version" set (based on what's on the cards). These are remarkably rare - I didn't even know they existed until 2022, some nine years after they were published.

2013 Konami Samurai Japan #B13SJ004

After a hiatus of a couple years, Konami returned to the baseball game card game in 2018 with their "Baseball Collection" cards. These cards were both used in a baseball video game found in arcades as well as being dispensed by the game as reward for either playing or winning it. Konami's web page about the game is long gone but their videos about it are still around - this post of mine has two of them.

There was basically one set released each year in multiple series. It looks like they'd be issued from March of one year until February of the following year. The sets had a LOT of cards - my analysis of the checklist for the 2021 set implied that there were on the order of 1600+ cards issued between March of 2021 and February of 2022 although I might not have accounted for duplicate listings at Suruga-ya.
The player cards themselves came in several different varieties - "N", "R", "SR" and "P" which I think meant "Normal", "Rare", "Super Rare" and "Premium". I'm not sure if each player had all four types.

Konami did the "Baseball Collection" cards for five years, ending in 2022. Here's some sample cards from each year. I'm showing one of each variety for each year although I only have all four varieties for two of the five years: