OK, to be honest, "they" in this case is "me". "It" is redeeming an "exchange card" for an autograph that was pulled from a box of Japanese baseball cards from overseas.
My assumption was always that you couldn't do it from outside of Japan. To be honest, though, now that I'm thinking back on it, I'm not sure why I made that assumption. But I've known of a couple people in the US who've pulled exchange cards from busting boxes of BBM cards and my advice to them was always to find someone in Japan who was willing to handle getting the card redeemed for them.
My assumption, however, was apparently not correct. There was a post on Reddit a few weeks ago from a user from the UK with the handle Carlbertosilva who had recently visited Japan and took in an open-sen (pre-season) game at Tokyo Dome. He'd picked up a box of 2026 BBM Rookie Edition and pulled a card that could be redeemed for a shikishi (basically a somewhat large cardboard square featuring the player's autograph - Kenny sent me one a few years back) for Hiroki Tsuneya, the first pick of the Fighters in the ikusei portion of last fall's NPB draft.
Since he didn't know that it was impossible to redeem the card from overseas, he decided to go ahead and try it. He was rewarded a few weeks later with a package in the mail from BBM containing the shikishi. He shared photos of the exchange card, the note from BBM and the shikishi on Reddit and I've swiped those images to show here:
The text on the exchange card basically outlines what it is the card is good for and where to send it (via registered mail) to redeem it (along with a bunch of legalese about how you don't get the card back and that BBM isn't responsible if your exchange card gets lost on its way to them or if your shikishi gets damaged in transit).
The note (which I assume came with the shikishi but maybe I should be careful in making any assumptions) basically says "congratulations on winning an autograph", "thanks for buying BBM cards" and "like we said, you don't get the exchange card back".
So there you have it - exchange cards from BBM boxes at least can be redeemed from outside of Japan. I don't know if that extends to the other card makers or not but, as Carlbertosilva shows, it can't hurt to try.
Thanks to Carlbertosilva for sharing his story and giving me permission to re-share it here.
I'm not super surprised if these things are more accessible to non-Japanese countries than you'd expect. Mostly because it's been an open secret that the biggest market for NPB cards is largely foreigners in the US and China who're gobbling up the Roki Sasaki's and Munetaka Murakami's of the world at rates the average Japanese person can't reasonably afford.
ReplyDeleteAlso for whatever it's worth EPOCH Trading Cards America launched a while ago. I don't know how much of their NPB stuff is actually coming to North America but on some level they are expanding their presence.
That's interesting. I'm a bit surprised by that since I've very rarely run into other Western collectors in the card shops in Japan but that may because I'm typically searching for obscure singles to complete 20 year old sets rather than going to Mint Lab to look for rare parallels of the latest player to be rumored to be looking to make the jump to MLB
DeleteThe whales I'm describing never actually travelled to Japan, nor were the vendors selling the cards stores with actual storefronts. The trade-in rates at card shops in Japan are pretty bad so most people just sold directly on Yahoo Auctions and Mercari, where foreigners use 3rd party proxies and use the depressed Japanese yen as a discount. Eventually the sellers realized that instead of selling on sites where foreigners can pay yen in USD and get a FOREX discount, they should just sell on eBay and have folks pay USD in USD. Causing more inflation and making Fighters-era Ohtani autographs even more expensive.
DeleteI'm slowly expanding my Japanese vocabulary. Today's word was "shikishi". I've actually had a few in my hands recently. Purchased a stack of sumo wrestlers last year for Ryan (sumomenkoman), but didn't know what they were called.
ReplyDeleteThey're kind of cool. I have the one Kenny gave me framed although I've yet to actually hang it on the wall of my office.
DeleteSo are these the guys selling stuff on Ebay that can be found cheaper on Mercari or Yahoo Auctions?
ReplyDelete