Autumn Issues

I had been planning all of last week to do a "New Releases" post but it kept getting delayed for one thing or another.  I didn't think it would take too long, though, as there were only three sets that had been announced in the last month or so.  But then Friday, Epoch, Topps and BBM all made announcements so the number of new sets to talk about doubled.  So I'd better get moving before they announce more...

- Fusion, BBM's season-in-review set, is back for the tenth year.  This is kind of a kitchen-sink Franken-set that's basically got four independent parts - a 99 card combination active-OB player subset that recaps the year; 25 "1st Version Update" cards featuring players who did not make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version sets for whatever reason; 20 "Monthly MVP" cards and an unspecified number of short-printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "1st Version Update" cards will include players who returned from MLB in mid-season like Shintaro Fujinami and Koyo Aoyagi as well as late signing foreign players like Luke Voit.  The "Monthly MVP" subset is new as previous editions of the set had a 24 card "Title Holders" featuring all the statistical leaders for the year.  I'm not sure why BBM decided to go with monthly MVP winners instead and I'm not sure I like the change (not that BBM is going to care what I think).  There's also the usual insert sets - the 24 "Great Records" cards which highlight milestones reached by two active players from each team; the 12 "Legendary Player" cards which feature one OB player from each team and the serially numbered premium inserts of "Treasure" (12 cards) and "Esperanza" (24 cards).  There are also autographed cards available for both the active and OB players.  The set will be released in late November.

- Epoch's NPB Luxury Collection is back for the fourth year and for the fourth year, the format of the set has completely changed.  The 2022 version was basically a "Chrome-ified" version of a subset of the regular NPB set - almost all the cards in the Luxury version used the same photo as the regular set.  The 2023 version was basically a completely different set that used the same format as the regular NPB set that year - all the photos were different and there was at least one player in the Luxury version that didn't appear in the regular set.  Epoch went the "ultra high-end" route with last year's set where boxes containing just nine cards sold for 23,760 yen (about $160).  Each of the 108 base set cards were serially numbered to 86.  This year's version has gotten even more exclusive - the price for the box hasn't changed but the box now contains just six cards (at least one of which is an autograph).  The base set is now just 36 cards - 3 per team including each team's top two 2024 draft picks.  I assume they're all serially numbered but I don't know how many there are of each card.  There are parallel versions of the base cards, a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set, a 12 card "Gem" premium insert set (with various parallels) and a boat load of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The set will be released on October 25th.

- The NPB Luxury Collection is not the only "ultra high-end" set coming out from Epoch.  On the same day, Epoch will be releasing the annual Pacific League Premier Edition set in six card boxes that will retail for 17,600 yen (roughly $120).  The base set has 54 cards - nine per team - and there's a 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" insert set which has parallel versions available.  There are 18 premium insert "Gem" cards that also have parallel versions and autographed cards for all the players who appear in the base set.  There are various types of memorabilia cards available as well including ones that are autographed.

- Epoch's first "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team set will be released on November 1st.  Three card boxes of Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia will retail for 16500 (about $112).  The base set has 56 cards - 23 for active players and 33 for OB players (including Sadaharu Oh and the late Shigeo Nagashima).  There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  The memorabilia cards referred to by the set title are bat cards for six active players.  The set also includes several different types of autographed cards.  All the autographed cards are for OB players because the Giants do not allow authentic autographed cards for any of their active players.

- Topps is finally issuing some more NPB sets for this year.  They announced the NPB Stadium Club set a few weeks back and while the information about it on Trading Card Journal says the set will be released on September 26, the information about it on Topps' Japanese website doesn't have a release date.  Neither site lists useful information like how big the set is but since they've posted a checklist, we know that the base set has the usual 216 cards (18 per team which includes the manager and the top three 2024 draft picks).  There are four 24 card insert sets - "Beam Team", "Concentration", "Savage Sluggers" and "Stadium Shots" - and the usual plethora of autographed cards of current NPB players, Japanese MLB players and "NPB Legends".  I mock Topps for doing a half-assed job on most of their NPB products but I have to admit that I'm impressed by two of the "NPB Legends" that they've has included autographs for.  The first is MLB Hall Of Famer Rich Gossage, who made 28 appearances with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in 1990 and, to my knowledge, has never appeared on an NPB card before.  The second is Hideo Nomo, who has not pretty much not appeared on an NPB card since 1994 (with the exception of the 2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 cards that don't have his photo on them and an SGA card from a 2018 Meikyukai game at Tokyo Dome).  If you're patient, you might be able to pick this set up super-cheap like Sean did with last year's version.

- Topps has also announced their annual NPB Chrome set.  Once again, I can't say for sure when the set will be released (their website says September 30th while Trading Card Journal says October 14th) or how big the base set is - I'm guessing 216 cards again.  Like the past two years, this year's edition is not simply an ugly parallel version of the set they released last summer but will have an entirely different checklist with different photos.  (OK, I acknowledge that not everyone shares my opinion that cards with the Chrome finish are ugly.)  There are four insert sets - "Helix-Power Players", "1990 Topps Baseball", "Kanji Variation" and "NPB Gamers" - but I don't know how big any of them are although I'd guess 24 cards.  This set also has autographed cards available from active and "legendary" NPB players and Japanese MLB players.  I expect that both this set and the Stadium Club set will have a boatload of parallels but their promotional material doesn't list them.

Card Of The Week September 14

I'm a little late in reporting this but a week ago on September 7th, the Hanshin Tigers clinched the Central League pennant.  It was the earliest any team had ever clinched first in the Central League, beating the 1990 Yomiuri Giants by one day.  It was also the first time the Tigers won the CL pennant with a first year manager at the helm.  (H/T NPB Reddit for the trivia)

Since I don't have many cards from this year, I don't have any cards of that first year manager - Kyuji Fujikawa - as manager but I have many of him as a player.  Here's his appearance on the 2008 BBM 2nd Version set's Tigers checklist (#778):

I don't know if it was typical of Fujikawa to lose his hat when he pitched.  There's one other card I know of showing him losing it though.

2025 JABA Cards

The 96th Intercity Baseball Tournament, which is basically the corporate league championship, was held at Tokyo Dome from August 28th until last Monday (the eighth).  Two teams from the Tokai region, Oji and Mitsubishi Motors Okazaki met in the finals with Oji squeaking out a 2-1 victory.

My friend Deanna attended some of the games and sent me the photo above to let me know that JABA had, for the fifth year in a row, put out a set of baseball cards.  She asked me if I wanted her to take photos of the individual pages and I said "yes, please!"  I figured seeing all the cards laid out like this would make it much easier to put a checklist for the set together.  She sent me the photos the next day.

The sheets or posters (I don't know if they're a photo of the cards or some sort of frame holding actual cards) are split up by position.  The one on the far left is all pitchers, the one to the right of it is catchers, the one to the right of that is infielders and the one on the far right is outfielders.  Here's her photos of each sheet:

Pitchers

Catchers

Infielders

Outfielders

There's 80 cards in the set - 27 pitchers, 8 catchers, 24 infielders and 21 outfielders.  I was able to put a checklist together pretty easily - I had assumed that the cards were laid out on the sheets in numerical order and that turned out to be the case.  I found most of the cards were up for sale on Mercari and I was able to verify the card numbers from the photos in those listings.

Actually, to be completely honest, the Mercari listings verified that the cards were laid out on the sheets in order but the numbers I had assigned that cards didn't quite work - the higher numbers were off by one.  I eventually figured out that there didn't appear to be a card #50 - Hiroki Nakagawa and Jin Nakamura appear right next to each other in the third row of the infielder's poster but their numbers are not consecutive (#49 for Nakagawa and #51 for Nakamura).  It's possible that there's a card #50 that does not appear on the sheet but I haven't seen it in the Mercari listings.

Deanna bought five packs and opened them up.  She sent me photos of the packs and the cards:

The fronts and backs of the cards look very similar to the 2024 cards (which actually look very similar to the 2023 cards).

The QR code on the back of the pack leads to the same webpage on the Baseball Foundation Of Japan's site that the QR code on the back of all the previous sets' packs referred to.  This webpage again has a pdf file containing a list of players - it's the 7th version of this pdf and it was generated last February.  I had used previous versions of this pdf to generate the checklists for the 2021, 2022 and 2024 JABA sets.  I didn't need to do that this year and it's a good thing - the pdf only lists 74 players!  There's 26 pitchers, 8 catchers, 20 infielders and 20 outfielders.  

Everyone who's in the pdf is in the set but I noticed something interesting about the cards of the players who weren't in the pdf - they have a gold banner going across the bottom of the card.  There are eleven cards with the banner - five of them are in the pdf and six of them are not.  What's the deal?

I asked Deanna about the banners and she realized that the cards with the banner had a black box on the back that indicated that the player had won a Best 9 award in 2024.  You can see this in the photo of the card backs above - there's four cards (although one of them's a duplicate) with a black box at the bottom of the back of the card.  All the other cards have grey and white boxes in this space.  So the eleven cards are all Best 9 award winners from last year.

Or are they?  Eleven is kind of a weird count for Best 9.  I again went to the Mercari listings and tried to track down all eleven of these cards.  I was only able to find ten of them but luckily all the listings showed both the front and back of the cards.  What I discovered was that not all of these cards were for Best 9 award winners.  Some of the cards were also for statistical leaders - ERA, Wins, Batting Average, Home Runs and RBIs.  Three of the Best 9 winners were also statistical leaders with the Victory and Home Run leaders being the two players with gold banners who were not Best 9 winners.  So nine of the eleven gold banner cards were for Best 9 winners.

You'd think that would make sense, right?  Nine cards for the Best 9?  Well, no because one of those best 9 awards is for best DH so there should actually be TEN Best 9 award winners.  Who's missing?

I had mentioned that there was one gold banner card I couldn't find on Mercari.  It was for Yuki Sato and from the process of elimination from the other Best 9 winners, I knew he needed to be either the first or second base winner.  Which meant that either the first or second base winner either wasn't in the set or didn't have the gold banner on his card.

I finally tracked the list of 2024 award winners on JABA's site and I had my answer.  Sato was the second base winner and the first base winner is not in the card set.  Why is he not in the card set?  Because he's now a member of the Orix Buffaloes - Ryoma Yamanaka.

This is the first time I know of that JABA has done what are essentially "Title Holder" cards in their sets (it's possible they did them in 2023 since I've only ever seen two cards from that set).  Here's the list of these cards with the player's award/title:

Number	Name	Position	Award/Title
23	Daiki Honma	Pitcher	Best 9 (P), ERA Leader
27	Ryuji Higashino	Pitcher	Most Pitcher Wins
35	Kauki Tsushima	Catcher	Best 9 (C)
57	Yuki Sato	Infielder	Best 9 (2B)
58	Keita Wada	Infielder	Best 9 (SS)
59	Daichi Nozaki	Infielder	Best 9 (3B)
60	Yusuke Shimoyama	Infielder	Best 9 (DH)
62	Ryosuke Aizawa	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF), Most RBI
63	Keisho Amiya	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF)
76	Yuichiro Murakami	Outfielder	Most Home Run
80	Fumiya Yoshioka	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF), Batting Champ

Before sharing the checklist itself, I should mention that many of the players have appeared in previous JABA sets.  Two of the players who've appeared in the previous sets - Ryosuke Aizawa and Motoki Mukoyama - also appeared in the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  They are not the only players in the set who have appeared in a Panini set - Ryo Arima and Toyo Kumada are in the 2024 version of the USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  The only other player in the set who has earlier, non-JABA cards that I'm aware of is Keisho Amiya who spent three years as a development player for the Baystars.

Thanks again to Deanna for the photos and the information.

I added the 2025 JABA checklist to the same Google spreadsheet that I had shared for the 2021, 2022 and 2024 sets.  I added a placeholder for the 2023 checklist as well:

RIP Jim Marshall & Brian Dayett

I wanted to do a quick post about two former MLB/NPB players who both passed away this past Sunday, Jim Marshall and Brian Dayett.

Jim Marshall is probably best known to most baseball fans as an original Met (he played 17 games with the inaugural 1962 squad) and as manager of the Cubs and A's in the 70's but he spent the last three years of his playing career with the Chunichi Dragons from 1963 to 1965.  He hit 78 home runs with 252 RBIs over those three seasons and made the Central League All Star team each year.  He returned to Japan in the early 80's as a coach for the Dragons under manager Sadao Kondoh, who'd been a coach for the Dragons when Marshall played for them.  Marshall was 94.  

As far as I can tell, Marshall had four baseball cards in Japan, all from menko sets in 1963 and 1964.  He's in the 1963 Marusho JCM 13c and Marukami JCM 14f and the 1964 Marusan JCM 11 and Marukami JCM 14g sets.  The only ones of these that I have are the Marukami ones:

1963 Marukami JCM 14f

1964 Marukami JCM 14g

Brian Dayett had spent several seasons with the Yankees and Cubs before signing a four year deal with the Fighters prior to the 1988 season.  Injuries limited him to only 35 games in his first season and while he was healthy enough to get into 84 games in 1989, he only hit .278 with 14 home runs which was not the production that the Fighters had been hoping for.  He was pretty much relegated to the farm team over his last two years in Japan, only getting into 26 games with the top team in 1990 and 1991.  He retired as a player after his contract with the Fighters was up.  He passed away from complications from Parkinson's disease at age 68 after a 25 year battle with the disease.

I believe Dayett had five Japanese baseball cards.  He's in the 1988 and 1990 Takara Fighters sets, the 1988 Calbee set, the 1989 Lotte set and the 1991 BBM set.  Here are two of them:

1988 Takara Fighters #9

1991 BBM #107

Card Of The Week September 7

Each of the three games between the Dodgers and Orioles in Baltimore this weekend featured a Japanese starting pitcher.  On Friday, Shohei Ohtani started for the Dodgers and threw 3 2/3 scoreless innings.  He was not involved in the decision for a game that the Orioles ended up winning on a 2-1 walk off. 

On Saturday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto came close to making history.  He kept the Orioles hitless for 8 2/3 innings before Jackson Holliday hit a solo home run off of him.  Had he completed the no-hitter, he would have become the first pitcher to throw no-hitters in both NPB and MLB.  He also did not get a decision in the game - he was lifted after giving up the home run and the Dodgers bullpen proceeded to blow the game with the Orioles scoring four in the inning to walk the game off for the second straight night.

I attended this afternoon's game and was excited that Tomoyuki Sugano was starting for the Orioles.  I pointed out to my wife and some friends at the game that Sugano had thrown a no-hitter in Japan so maybe he could be the first to throw one in both leagues.  Well, he may do that someday but it didn't happen today - Ohtani hit his second pitch of the game into the center field stands.  It was not a good outing for Sugano, giving up four runs in three plus innings including three solo home runs (two by Ohtani and one by Mookie Betts) before being forced from the game after being hit in the leg by a line drive from Kim Hyeseong.  He was the only one of the three to get a decision, taking the loss as the O's fell to the Dodgers 5-2.

All three pitchers have suited up for Samurai Japan over the years.  Ohtani was part of the 2015 Premier 12 and 2023 World Baseball Classic teams; Yamamoto was on the squads for the 2019 Premier 12, 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2023 WBC and Sugano played on the 2015 Premier 12 and 2017 WBC teams.  I thought I'd share National Team cards of all three:

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-07

2023 BBM Infinity #23

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-02

RIP Dave Johnson

Longtime MLB player and manager Dave Johnson passed away this morning at age 82.  I don't think it's very well known that Johnson spent two seasons with the Yomiuri Giants in the mid-70's, although the fact that he was the only player to be a teammate of both Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh sometimes comes up as a trivia question.

Johnson joined the Giants in mid-April of 1975, after he'd appeared in one game with the Atlanta Braves that season.  The signing was significant in a number of ways.  Johnson would be the first foreign player on Yomiuri since (I think) Toshio "Andy" Miyamoto in 1962 and the first foreign player for the team who was not of Japanese descent.  He would also be the first former Major Leaguer to play for the Giants.  He also be replacing Giants legend Shigeo Nagashima at third base, a position he really hadn't played much before.  The newly retired Nagashima would be his manager.

If I'm following the chronology in Johnson's Japanese Wikipedia page correctly, he signed with the Giants on April 18th, arrived in Japan on the 20th and made his first appearance in a game on the 22nd.  That's a game with the ichi-gun team, not a farm team game to get his feet wet.  His first at bat was a pinch hitting appearance against the Dragons and Senichi Hoshino - he struck out.  That would be a portent on how the season would go.  Johnson would battle injuries and unfamiliarity with both Central League pitchers and the third base position.  At one point in June, he struck out in eight straight at bats, a league record.  He finished the season with a .197 average with 13 home runs in 91 games.  He struck out 71 times.  Johnson took some of the blame from the fans for the Giants suffering their first (and only) last place finish in their history.

Things improved in 1976.  The Giants made a big trade to bring in Isao Harimoto from the Fighters which took some of the pressure off Johnson.  They also moved Johnson to second base, with outfielder Shigeru Takada (who was displaced by Harimoto's arrival) moving to third base.  Despite still suffering from some injuries, Johnson responded by hitting .275 with 26 home runs in 108 games, helping the Giants win their first Central League under Nagashima (and first in three years which doesn't sound like a long time but that pennant in 1973 had been the last of nine straight).  He was selected for the All Star team but declined, taking advantage of the time off to go back to the States for medical treatment.  He won both the Best 9 and Diamond Glove post-season awards for second base.

The season ended on a sour note, however, in the Nippon Series against the Hankyu Braves.  In the second half of the season, Johnson had extracted a promise from Nagashima that he wouldn't be pinch hit for or removed from the starting lineup.  But after going hitless in eight at bats with four strikeouts in the first two games of the Series - both losses for the Giants, Nagashima replaced him with Shozo Doi for Game Three (which Yomiuri also lost).  Johnson decided at that point that he'd leave the team after the Series ended.  The Giants would rally, winning Games Four, Five and Six before ultimately losing the Series in seven but Johnson would only start in one more game.  He went 0-13 with six strikeouts in the Series.

Negotiations with the Giants for the 1977 season broke down with the Giants insisting on a 30% pay cut and Johnson insisting that Nagashima apologize for breaking his promise.  The Kintetsu Buffaloes expressed interest in signing him after he and Yomiuri officially parted ways, but decided not to pursue it after the Giants expressed disapproval.  Johnson returned to MLB and spent his last two seasons with the Phillies and Cubs before retiring at the end of the 1978 season.

Dave Johnson had a number of baseball cards while he was in Japan.  Engel's latest guide lists 31 cards for him, including 20 from the 1975/76/77 Calbee set.  I think that number's a little low, though as it does not include a card he shares with Isao Harimoto or his appearance on the Giants' team card.  He also had a card in the 1975 NST set, one of the Yamakatsu sets, a Broder set and a bunch of oddball sets including a couple of inserts in kid's magazines.  Here's some of the Calbees and the Yamakatsu:

1975/76/77 Calbee #348

1975/76/77 Calbee #385  (w/Isao Harimoto)

1975/76/77 Calbee #449

1975/76/77 Calbee #494

1975/76/77 Calbee #559

1975/76/77 Calbee #591

1975/76/77 Calbee #675

1975/76/77 Calbee #1067

1976 Yamakatsu JY1a (w/Isao Harimoto)

I've had that Yamakatsu card a while now but it wasn't until today that I noticed that it only had a facsimile signature for Harimoto.

As far as I can tell, Johnson has only appeared in two OB sets since he left Japan - the two BBM sets from 2013 that featured foreign players - "Legendary Foreigners" and "Deep Impact":

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #14

2013 BBM Deep Impact #03

2001 DigiCube Dragons Nine Box Break

In 2000 and 2001, an outfit called DigiCube issued sets for the Chunichi Dragons.  These sets were somewhat mysterious to me as they were not listed in Engel although they did appear in the Sports Card Magazine (SCM) listings for non-BBM baseball card sets.  According to SCM, the cards were only sold through Circle-K convenience stores in the Tokai region (which is an unofficial region in Japan that's not strictly defined but contains Aichi, Gifu, Mie and Shizuoka prefectures).  I should note that this "Circle K" was not the same one that's in the US - they were a separate company that licensed the store name from the North American firm.  They've since merged with FamilyMart and all the stores have been rebranded.

I had never seen many of these cards anywhere although I finally tracked down two cards from each set at Wrappers during my 2019 trip to Japan.  I used to see unopened boxes for sale on Yahoo! Japan Auctions some 10 or 15 years ago - in fact that was where I first learned of their existence - but I hadn't seen any for sale for a while until some time over this past winter.  I saw a box of the 2001 set for 1800 yen or about $13.  I asked Ryan to grab it and it's yet another item that was in the box he sent me in July.

I hadn't done a box break in quite a while so it was a lot of fun opening all the packs one evening a few weeks back.  As you can see from the box top above, the box contained 15 packs which each contained 8 cards which means that the box contained 120 cards in all.  

One side of the box contains information on the breakdown of the set checklist:

The checklist of the set is a little confusing.  There's 108 numbered cards in it but, according to both the box and SCM, the base set only contains 72 cards.  I guess that the other 36 cards should be considered either insert cards or short printed cards, but as we'll see in a minute, they don't seem to be all that rare.  There are two varieties of these cards - 16 "The Memorabilia" cards which is a very misleading way to label a bunch of cards that commemorate significant events for the Dragons between Opening Day of 2000 and Opening Day of 2001 and 20 "Premium Players" cards (to be completely accurate, the "Premium Players" cards are labeled as being "Silver").  There are two possible parallel versions of the "Premium Players" cards - "Gold" which were limited to 570 apiece (but NOT serially numbered) and "Foil Autograph" which were limited to 300 each (and also not serially numbered).  I think only 12 of the "Premium Players" cards had the facsimile autograph parallel.

Actually, looking at the information from the box again, I think the only things that should be considered short prints or inserts are the parallel cards - the ones that are listed in the section marked "SP INSERT".

After opening all the packs, I found that I had the following:

78 base set cards (54 unique)

20 "The Memorabilia" cards (15 unique)

19 "Premium Players" cards (18 unique)

3 "Premium Players" gold parallel cards (3 unique)

There were at least two of the "The Memorabilia" and "Premium Player" cards in every pack which means that while they may be more rare than the base set cards, I still got most of them.  But I only ended up with three of the parallels, the actual short printed cards.

According to SCM, there are also two unnumbered checklist cards but I did not get either of them and I'm not sure they actually exist - the information on the box side doesn't mention them.

If you count up unique cards, you'll see that I ended up with 88 of the 108 (or 110 if you include the checklists) cards.  Or you will if I pass along one more piece of information - one of the "Premium Players" parallel cards I got was one of the ones I was missing from the regular ones so I actually have 19 of the cards from the subset.  That leaves me with either 20 or 22 cards left to get if I want to get the complete set.  Which, of course, I've decided that I do.

It turns out that I'm already one card on my way to completing the set because one of the two cards I picked up at Wrappers six years ago - Senichi Hoshino - was not one of the cards in this box.  So now I only need 19 (or 21) cards!

Let's dig into the set itself.  Those 72 base set cards are essentially a "comprehensive" team set for the Dragons with cards for manager Hoshino and the 67 players - everyone on the team's 70 man roster.  That accounts for 68 of the 72 cards with the other four being kind of oddball cards that I'll talk about in a minute.

The big names in the set are obviously the players who were big names on the Dragons in 2001 including Masahiro Yamamoto, Hitoki Iwase, Kosuke Fukudome, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Kenshin Kawakami, Masahiro Araki, and Masahiko Morino.  There's seven foreign players - four from Western countries - Melvin Bunch, Eddie Gaillard, Ozie Timmons and Tim Unroe - and three from Asian countries - Lee Jong-beom (Korea), Lu Jian-gang (China) and Soh Chun-yang (Taiwan).  This is the first NPB card I've seen of Lu, a member of the Chinese National Team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2009 and 2013 WBCs.  I suspect that he's also in the 2000 DigiCube set - those would be the only NPB cards he ever had, along with any team issued cards.

I've mentioned numerous times in the past that I prefer borderless card designs that feature full bleed photos.  These are kind of odd in that they both have and don't have borders.  The background of the photo is tinted and there's some sort of graphic behind the player that includes a border, but the background image can be seen through the border.  The photo selection is good - there's a lot of "pitchers pitching, batters batting" poses but there's a number of other poses as well.  I think I'd really like the cards if they didn't have the tinted backgrounds.  Here's some examples:

#046

#002

#063

#067

#035

##039

#052

I really like how Yamasaki is up on his toes, probably jumping as he's hit a home run.

I mentioned that there were four oddball cards in the base set.  Before I delve into them, I need to explain how the set's checklist is laid out.  It's done by uniform number and position, the same way that Japanese publications list a team's roster.  The first card in the set is for manager Senichi Hoshino.  The next section of the checklist is for the pitchers, with Kenshin Kawakami (uniform #11) being listed first, followed by Shinya Okamoto (#12), Hitoshi Iwase (#13), Shinji Imanaka (#14), etc, all the way up to Yoshitaka Nagata (#94).  Next are the catchers, starting with Yuichi Yanagisawa (#00) and ending with Keiji Miwa (#67), followed by the infielders (#1 Kosuke Fukudome* to #66 Mitsunobu Takahashi) and the outfielders (#0 Shogo Mori to #99 Kazuki Inoue).  This is pretty much the way that BBM and Epoch do the checklists for their "comprehensive" team sets.

*He was the Dragons' Opening Day third baseman that season

The location of two of these odd ball cards in the checklist made kind of obvious sense somewhat.  This card is #037 and separates the pitchers in the checklist from the position players:

#037

Team photos are pretty rare in Japanese baseball cards - off hand this is the only one I think I've seen other than the ones for the champions in BBM's Nippon Series box sets (and some of the flagship sets).  The back of the card lists the coaching staff for both the top team and the farm team.

This card is #072, the last card in the base set, which is kind of where you'd expect a card like this:

#072

The other two cards made me scratch my head for a bit though.  They're labelled "Illustration Cards" on the back and feature drawings of Kosuke Fukudome and Takeshi Yamasaki:

#006

#055

I was a little baffled about why these two cards were kind of randomly added to the checklist but I eventually realized that it wasn't random.  I was comparing the cards I had to the team's roster on Japanese Wikipedia to try to figure out whose cards I was missing*.  One of the things I had to think about was when the set went to press because that would determine who I should expect to be in the set.  As I mentioned above, the "The Memorabilia" subset cards contained a card for the Dragons' victory on Opening Day of 2001 (which was on March 31st), so obviously it couldn't have been before then.  Lee Jong-beom left the team in May, so the set must have gone to press before that (since it's very unusual for an NPB set to include a player on a team that he no longer plays for), probably in April.

* Of course, I could have just looked at the list of players on the front of the box but what fun would that have been?

There were three transactions that affected the Dragons' 70 man roster that April.  They traded pitcher Hiroshi Yamada and infielder Hitoshi Taneda to the Baystars for outfielder Toshio Haru; they sold outfielder Masahiko Harada to the Fighters and they re-signed infielder Leo Gomez.   None of these five players appear in the set and I don't know when the transactions occurred.  But what I found interesting is that Yamada's uniform number with the Dragons was 16 which would have put him in between Shinji Imanaka (#14) and Kazuhiro Takeda (#17) on the roster.  Imanaka's card in the set is #005 and Takeda's is #007 so Yamada's card would have been #006, the same as the "Illustration Card" for Fukudome.  Similarly, Taneda's uniform number was 49 which would have put him in between Hirokazu Ibata (#48 and card #054) and Kazuhito Yoshimura (#50 and card #056).  Taneda's card would have been #055, the same as the "Illustration Card" for Yamasaki.  So the two cards are replacement cards for the two players who had been traded.

There is no gap in the checklist for Harada.  I suspect that his transaction was earlier than the Yamada and Taneda's so DigiCube had time to adjust the checklist before printing the cards but I don't know that for sure.

OK, so that was quite a digression into the weeds of checklist construction and player transactions.  Let's get back to talking about the cards.

As I mentioned previously, the misleadingly named "The Memorabilia" subset contains 16 cards that commemorate "significant" events for the Dragons starting with Melvin Bunch's no-hitter on April 7th, 2000 and going to Masahiro Yamamoto's victory on Opening Day 2001 (March 31st).  Most of the intervening events are career milestones being reached (Kazuyoshi Tatsunami's 1500th hit, Senichi Hoshino's 700th win, Yamamoto's 2000th inning pitched, etc).  Some of the others are the Dragons' farm team winning their league title, the team's 2000 draft picks, and several players winning post-season awards.  Here's a couple of these cards:

#073

#082

#088

The 20 "Premium Player" cards are basically shiny cards for the top players on the team.  They remind me a little of Calbee's "Star" cards and don't scan very well.  Here's Fukudome's card:

#096

The backs have a different photo on them.  In some cases, it's a more interesting photo:

Fukudome's card is the "Silver" version of these cards.  Here's one of the rarer "Gold" parallels:

#092

The lighter color scans a little better.

There's one more card from this set that I want to talk about and it's a card that isn't mentioned on the side of the box or the SCM checklist.  There was a loose card in with the unopened packs in the box:

#PRO3

From the back of the card, it looks like there were four possible cards that could have been in the box:

I'm very curious about something.  If you look at the box top image at the top of the post, you'll notice a grey circle that says "Special Present!! Player's Bat, Grove[sic], Uniform and More!!" which implies that there are memorabilia cards associated with this set (and not the "The Memorabilia" subset).  But as we've seen, there's no indication on the breakdown of the cards in the set on the side of the box that there are any such cards.  SCM doesn't mention them either.  I wonder if they were inserted into the boxes of packs like this card was.  The box does mention a "Secret Insert!!" so maybe these cards and the memorabilia cards were it.  On the other hand, the packs also mention both the "Special Present!!" and "Secret Insert!!" so maybe not.