Three Envelopes From Kenny

I got an email a few weeks back from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) informing me that there were three(!) envelopes containing cards that were working their way across the Pacific to me from Japan.  Two of these envelopes showed up on the first of the month but, for whatever reason, the third didn't make it to my house until today.  

The first of these envelopes contained an unopened pack of Bandai's collectible card game called Fan Stars.  Specifically it was a pack of the Central League Vol. 2 cards that came out at the end of May:

Like the Pacific League Vol. 1 pack that Kenny sent me a few months back, this pack contained seven cards - five "normal", one "rare" and one "super rare":

#BBC02-062

#BBC02-007

#BBC02-077

#BBC02-092

#BBC02-029

#BBC02-021

#BBC02-044

It might not be obvious but the Nakano card is the "rare" one and the Tsutsugoh card is the "super rare" one.

The other two envelopes contained a mixture of this year's Calbee, Epoch and Topps cards.  Here's the Calbee's:

#027 Kazuya Ojima

#030 Ryusei Terachi

#029 Daito Yamamoto

#035 Masaki Oyokawa

#018 Shoma Fujihira

Here are the Epoch cards from their "NPB" flagship set:

#102

#007

#134

#208

#023

#046

#085

#075

#234P

#168

It's hard to tells from the scan but the Kaito Saiki card is a parallel card.  The Matsushita card is a "rookie variation" card that came from the retail edition of the set - the "regular" version of the card has a different photo.

Finally the last batch of cards were from this year's Stadium Club NPB set which continues to be the best looking set that Topps has produced for their NPB offerings:

#27

#91

#5

#157

#120

#207

#139

#52

#64

I swear, if Topps increased the size of their Stadium Club NPB set to something approaching the size of BBM's 1st Version set, they'd give BBM a run for their money on being the NPB card set to get if you were getting just one set.

Once again, thank you for the cards, Kenny!

More New Items

I know it's only been a little over two weeks since the last time I did a round up of the latest set announcements but a there's been a couple more since then, one of which has kind of a short fuse, so I thought I should do another quick one.

- The short fuse item is that Calbee has finally announced that this year's Series Two will be released in late August.  Unfortunately, the set is pretty much the same size as every Calbee set from the past few years.  There's a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards (5 per team), 12 "Hope" cards (featuring a young prospect from each of the 12 teams) and 6 checklist cards (featuring photos of team mascots).  There are three insert sets - the usual 24 card "Star" set, a single "Legend" for Hirokazu Sawamura's retirement at the end of last season (there were four similar "Legend" cards in Series One) and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" set.  There are parallel versions of all the inserts.  Calbee has put the checklist of the set on line here.

- I keep forgetting that Bushiroad is still putting out their DreamOrder collectible card games this year.  The next release is called "Play Re:Style" and is due out on September 19th.  I'm not sure but I think there's 180 base cards (84 common, 48 rare, 36 "super rare" and 12 "zone rare") plus 30 Tactics cards (1 rare and 29 common) and the usual plethora of parallels.  I'm somewhat curious how much longer Bushiroad is going to keep publishing these as I kind of feel like they've been eclipsed by the Bandai FanStars cards.

- BBM will be releasing their annual "Rookie Edition Premium" set in late October.  Each box set will contain 38 cards - the complete 36 card base set plus two "premium insert cards".  The "premium insert cards" are all either autographed or memorabilia cards.  Since each box will most likely contain at least one autograph card, they aren't cheap.  The MSRP for a single box is 18,700 yen which is around $118.  The base set features three 2025 draft picks/2026 rookies from each team.  They won't necessarily be the top three draft picks but rather the three "best" (according to BBM) rookies for each team.

- Epoch has announced another of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" monicker.  This one is for the Hawks and will be released on October 10th.  The set will be sold in four card boxes that will retail for 18,700 yen (~$118).  The base set isn't quite set yet but will contain at least 75 cards including 37 cards for active players.  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.  There are six different types of autograph cards available - "Authentic" (75+ cards), "Star" (8 cards), "Rookie" (4 cards), "Breakthrough" (8 types), "Remember 1999" (15+ cards) and "Remember 2011" (13+ cards).

More Calbees From Kenny

I got home from work today to discover I'd received another envelope from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  Like the last one I got from him, this one contained several cards from the 2026 Calbee Series One set.  This time, all the cards were base cards from the set:

#008 Kota Tatsu

#014 Kotaro Kurebayashi

#023 Hiroshi Kaino

#021 Shuta Tonosaki

#T-21

#C-03

That final card is one of six checklist cards in the set.  The checklist cards for Calbee used to feature some of the best and most interesting photos in the set but for the past two years have featured images of the mascots instead.  Last year they were drawings but this year they seem to just be dull photos.  It's one of many decisions that the company has made over the past four years or so that make me scratch my head.

But despite that, I'm, as always, very grateful to Kenny for sending me the cards.  Thanks again!

New Acquisitions

I thought I'd do a quick post about some cards I recently picked up.  It's been about 18 months since I stopped buying new stuff but I do get a hankering every so often to get some new ones.

I put in an order with COMC in mid-April but, of course, I didn't actually receive the cards until late May.  I had decided to get serious about replacing a couple old Calbee cards that I'd picked up on my last trip to Japan two years ago but I was only able to find one of the cards.  I'd brought home this card of Shitoshi Sekimoto from the "Florida Project" subset of the 1974/75 Calbee set (#708) that someone had used a pencil to highlight Sekimoto on:

The new version looks much better:

Since I was already ordering from COMC, I figured I'd look around and see if there was anything else I wanted at a reasonable price.  I decided to pick up this card of Masato Morishita because (1) I've been a fan of Morishita since seeing him pitch for Meiji back in 2019 and (2) I wanted to have an example of the 1990 inserts from last year's Topps NPB set (#90-7):

I also picked up a couple cards from the 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic set.  I picked up the "image variant" of Masataka Yoshida's card (#91):

I already had the base version:

I also grabbed the "Captains Of The World Baseball Classic" insert card of Ha-seong Kim (#CC-14):

Moving on to some stuff I ordered from Ebay...

I'm kind of low key trying to get one of each of the autographed cards for the Samurai Japan Collegiate team that were in the 2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  This card of Ryuta Hirose got me halfway there:

Since the remaining 14 cards I need to complete the set include Misho Nishikawa, Seiya Watanabe, Rui Muneyama and Natsuki Takeuchi, I'm not expecting to ever actually finish the set.  As I've always said, I'm cheap, so I'm not willing to pay what it'd take to get those cards.  But I'll keep trying to get the low hanging fruit when I can.

The last two cards are for Rintaro Sasaki of Stanford University.  Sasaki was drafted last fall's NPB draft by the Hawks and is potentially going to get taken in next month's MLB draft.  The Hawks' rights for him expire at the end of July so he can see if any MLB teams are interested before deciding if he wants to join Softbank.  Panini has done about a gazillion cards of him (with another two gazillion parallels) so I decided to pick up a card of him from each of the past two years.  Generally I find Panini's cards kind of hideous but I was able to find two that weren't too bad.  This 2024 Onyx Vintage Extended card (#OVRISA) show him in what I think is a Trenton Thunder uniform with all the logos airbrushed/photoshopped off:

The 2025 Prizm card (#271) shows him in his Stanford uniform:

This batch of cards scratched an itch for a bit.  Ryan's still picking stuff up for me and, while I try not to take him for granted, Kenny's probably preparing another envelope of goodies for me, so I'm sure to be getting some more new stuff soon.

Cards From Kenny

I received yet another envelope in the mail today from Kenny (Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  As he promised me a few weeks ago, this one contained some cards from the lastest Calbee set, 2026 Series One.  There were two base set cards and two insert cards.  Curiously, three of the four cards featured members of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows:

#007

#059

#L-4

#S-23

Now that I have some 2026 Calbees in hand, I see that my initial impression that this year's cards looked identical to last year's was pretty much correct.  (Sean has mentioned to me in an email that the only difference between this year's cards and last year's that he's seen is "a slightly different font size for the player name on the back".)  I really wish I had some insight in to why Calbee decided to stop making any sort of effort since at least 2023.

Regardless of Calbee's shortcomings, however, I'm grateful as always to receive the cards.  Thanks once again, Kenny!