Japanese Brisbane Bandits Cards

I got a package in the mail the other day from my friend Steve Smith* in Australia.  Steve was kind enough to send me the cards of the three Japanese players who played for the Brisbane Bandits in this past Australian Baseball League season.

*I should mention here that baseball.com.au recently had an article about Steve and his "mission to collect the baseball card of every Australian who has played professional ball at any point, anywhere in the world".  

Two of the three players - Kyosuke Mashiko and Hayate Nakagawa - were dispatched to Brisbane by the Yokohama DeNA Baystars.  I think this makes them the first active NPB players in the ABL to appear on ABL baseball cards since Kenshi Sugiya in 2018.  (All the other Japanese players on ABL cards since then have been former NPB players.)

The third player is Ryo Kohigashi, who, based on his Facebook profile, used to play for Mitsubishi Motors in the corporate leagues (although I don't know WHICH Mitsubishi Motors team he was with).  Since then he's spent two seasons in North America with the Capitales de Québec of the Frontier League as well as three seasons in Australia (2022-23 with Auckland, 2024-25 with Canberra and 2025-26 with Brisbane).  This is not his first baseball card - he had cards with the Capitales in both 2024 adn 2025.  

All three cards are from the Series 1 card set issued by the Bandits and have identical backs:

Shane, the seller on Ebay that I've previously bought ABL cards from, is selling the complete set so, based on his listing, I can tell you that the set has 13 cards in all with Robbie Perkins probably being the biggest name in the set.

Thanks for the cards, Steve!

Delivery From Brisbane

Got a package in the mail yesterday from Australia containing a Brisbane Bandits team issued card of former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighter and Yomiuri Giant outfielder Daikan Yoh.  Yoh had spent last summer playing for the Lake Country DockHounds of the American Association* where one of his coaches was Dave Nilsson.  I'm sure it was just a coincidence that Yoh spent the winter playing in Brisbane for Nilsson's team.

*The DockHounds play in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which is where my sister-in-law lives.  We were out that way last summer for a family event and I had hoped to catch a game and see Yoh but we ended up going out the one weekend in August where the team was out of town.

 Anyway, here's the front and back of Yoh's card:

The card back says he was a member of the Taiwan National Team for the 2006 World Baseball Classic - he also was on the team for the 2013 WBC and the 2015 Premier 12.

I got the cards from Shane, a card dealer in Brisbane who sells cards on Ebay under the handle Australian-Baseball-Cards.  I pretty much get all my Australian cards either from Shane or Steve Smith.  Shane included a couple other cards with the Yoh card - two checklist cards for the Bandits team set which was isused in two separate series and a filler card showing sunset over the Bandit's ballpark.  I thought that card looked really nice so I'll share it here:

NPB Down Under Part 3

I've got a small collection of Australian baseball cards.  I've got the set Choice did for the Australian Baseball League (ABL) in 2018/19 but most of my cards are scattered singles of Japanese players who've played Down Under.  I've written about most of these cards in a couple posts last year.

I was a little disappointed this past winter that there was no set for the entire league.  For a while it looked like the only cards for the 2019/20 season would be team sets for the Sydney Blue Sox and Brisbane Bandits, neither of which had any Japanese players.  However some months back I saw on Twitter that the Auckland Tuatara was doing a Go Fund Me campaign to make a team set for the Tuatara.  I was intrigued because the Tuatara had had a couple Japanese pitchers last season but ultimately I decided against getting a set.  Luckily about a month ago I saw that Shane, the seller on Ebay (top-flite-79) who I'd previously bought ABL cards from had broken up one of the Tuatara sets and was selling singles.  I grabbed cards of the two Japanese players for around $10 (including shipping).  It took a little over a month for the cards to get here from Australia but they showed up earlier this week.

Most of the Japanese players in the ABL are there on loan from their NPB teams but neither of the Auckland players fall into that category.

Yujo Kitagata was actually on loan from the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He got into 13 games with Auckland this past season, going 1-0 with a 2.53 ERA in 10 2/3 innings of work.  He struck out an impressive 22 batters (averaging over 2 per inning) but he also walked 22 batters.  He was originally a first round pick of the Baystars in the 2011 draft and spent three years with their farm team, never making it to the ichi-gun squad.  DeNA released him after the 2014 season and he bounced around over the next few years, spending 2015 as an ikusei player with the Hawks, 2016 and 2017 with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the Baseball Challenge League, 2017 with the Ehime Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League, 2018 back in the BC League with the Shinano Grandserows and 2019 with the Tochigi Golden Braves (also BC League).  A Dodger scout discovered him with Tochigi last year and signed him to a contract.  He spent about six weeks playing for the Dodgers Arizona Summer League team, getting into 13 games and going 0-1 with a 7.20 ERA.  He struck out 21 and walked 17 in 15 innings pitched.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card from when he was a Baystar:

2013 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #12

Kyohei Muranaka was no longer a member of any NPB team when he joined the Tuatara last season.  He also had been a first round draft pick, having been selected by the Swallows out of high school back in 2005.  He was a Swallow for 14 seasons (although he only pitched with the top team in 11 of those seasons) and ultimately went 46-55 with an ERA of 4.30 in 199 games.  The Swallows released him after the 2019 season and after he drew no interest at the 12 team tryout in November he signed a deal with Auckland.  He went 2-2 with a 2.73 ERA in nine games during the regular season and (as the back of his baseball card says) he started the Tuatara's first ever playoff game in Melbourne.  For 2020 he has joined the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, the new Okinawa-based independent team.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card of him from his Yakult days:

2011 Swallows Team Set #YsS06

2019 SCC KBO Premium set

The second Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) set from SCC (really Daewoo Media) this year came out about a month ago.  This is SCC's "Premium" set and features a variety of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The base set contains 220 cards (22 per team) - as usual this is what I picked and as usual I got the set through Dan.

Like SCC's earlier set this year, the cards for the base set are split into "normal", "rare", "holo" and "signature" (which are facsimile signatures).  While each team has the same number of total cards (22), they don't necessarily have the same number of each type.  For example, Samsung has 13 "normal" cards, 4 "rare" cards, 3 "holo" cards and 2 "signature" cards while SK has 11 "normal", 5 "rare", 4 "holo" and 2 "signature" cards.

I can't really comment on how well the set represents the KBO.  As always there are no foreign players in the set.  I did notice that two former Cubs farmhands who are returning to Korea make their SCC base set debut in this set.  Ha Jae-Hoon spent 2009 to 2015 as an outfielder in the Cubs organization.  He was a member of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2016 (although I don't know of any NPB cards of him) and then spent the next two seasons with the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the Shikoku Island League where he converted to pitching.  He signed with SK as a pitcher (and I should point out that he had a short-printed rookie card in the earlier SCC set this year).  Rhee Dae-Eun was in the Cubs organization from 2008 to 2014.  He joined the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2015 for two seasons and spent 2017 and 2018 with the Korean Police team in the KBO Futures League.  He joined KT for the 2019 season.

Here's some example cards:

#SCCP1-19/214 Chi Seok-Hoon (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/086 Park Jeong-Eum (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/052 Park Sang-Won (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/039 Oh Jae-Il (Rare)

#SCCP1-19/146 Shin Bon-Ki (Rare)

#SCCP1-19/001 Ha-Jae-Hoon (Holo)

#SCCP1-19/178 Rhee Dae-Eun (Holo)

#SCCP1-19/170 Oh Ji-Hwan (Signature)

#SCCP1-19/095 Yang Hyeon-Jong (Signature)

Unlike the earlier SCC set (and the ones I got last year) the backs of the cards are not identical.  They have a photo of the player and some basic information.  For me the best part of the backs is that they have the player's name in English as my Korean reading skills are worse than my Japanese reading skills and my Japanese reading skills are practically non-existent.

Back of #SCCP1-19/114

I'm not a big fan of he wide borders on the "normal" and "rare" cards but it's still a nice looking set.  Dan has put the checklist up at TradingCardDB.com and has been adding scans of the cards.

Thanks for getting me the set, Dan!

Package From Down Under

I got a package in the mail from Steve Smith yesterday containing a handful of cards from Japan by way of Australia.  Steve lives near Melbourne and is a big fan of the Aces - I think he spent some time working for them.  Since Melbourne has been getting players from the Saitama Seibu Lions almost every season since the Australian Baseball League started back up in 2010 Steve's become a fan of the Lions as well.  Steve sent me some cards he had of the Lions.

First up are two cards from the 2019 BBM Lions set that Steve is trying to complete:

2019 BBM Lions #L53

2019 BBM Lions #L01

Next are three cards from the 2017 Lions Fan Club set:

There were also three cards from a different Lions team issued set that was also from 2017 (which is also different than the one 2017 Lions team issued card I got from Ryan when I was in Tokyo):

And lastly Steve included an Australian card - it's the card for Koo Dae-Sung from last winter's ABL set from Choice.  Koo was the manager for Geelong Korea, one of the two new expansion teams in the ABL last year.  Since the cards apparently went to press before the season started he is shown in a Sydney Blue Sox uniform instead of a Geelong uniform - he'd been coaching for the Blue Sox for a couple years after he retired as a player (he had also played a few seasons with Sydney).  His was the only card for Geelong that actually depicted a person - the other card simply described the team.

2018-19 Choice ABL #76

Thanks for the cards Steve!  I need to put together some cards to send back to you!

2019 SCC KBO Set

Daewoo Media issued their first set under their SCC moniker for the Korean Baseball Organization this year back in June.  Dan Skrezyna picked up a set for me a while back but I hadn't had a chance to write about until now.

There's 300 total cards available for the set although the base set only has 190 cards (19 per team).  There are also 10 rookie cards (1 per team) that are serially numbered to 100 and 100 autograph cards (which are NOT split evenly between the 10 teams) that are serially numbered to 10.

There are four different flavors of base set cards - "normal" (9 per team), "rare" (5 per team), "holo" (3 per team) and "signature" (2 per team).  The "rare" cards have a shimmering finish (that actually comes through on the scans) while the "holo" cards have a silvery finish.  The "signature" cards feature a facsimile signature done in "holographic ink".

I will defer from commenting how good the player selection is as I don't really know the KBO all that well.  There are (as usual) no foreign players in the set but pretty much every Korean player I know of off hand - Lee Dae-Ho, Park Byung-Ho, Kim Hyun-Soo, Hwang Jae-Gyun, Choi Jeong, Han Dong-Min, Son Ah-Seop, Lee Bum-Ho and Kim Tae-Kyun - are all in the set.

Here's some sample cards:

#SCCR1-19/011 Lee Jae-Won (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/034 Oh Jae-Ii (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/105 Baek Jeong-Hyeon (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/150 Sin Mae-Jae (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/094 Lee Chang-Jin (Rare)

#SCCR1-19/184 Park Jin-Woo (Rare)

#SCCR1-19/058 Kim Tae-Kyun (Holo)

#SCCR1-19/132 Lee Dae-Ho (Holo)

#SCCR1-19/077 Park Byung-Ho (Signature)

#SCCR1-19/179 Kim Baek-Ho (Signature)

Like the SCC sets from last year, the backs of all the cards are identical:

Also like the SCC sets from last year, this is an attractive set.  Dan has added the checklist for the set over at TradingCardDB.com and has added images for all the base set cards. 

I want to thank Dan for picking up a set for me.

"2015" Vittum Foreign Attack Set

Dan Skrezyna has just published his latest "Foreign Attack" set under the "Vittum" label.  These sets feature all the foreign players in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) for a particular season - Dan has been filling in the gaps since the official KBO cards do not include the foreign players. 

The newest set is for the 2015 season and contains 42 cards - 41 player cards plus a checklist.  I personally think this is the best looking set Dan's done so far but I've very partial to borderless, full bleed photos on the front of cards.  Here's the front and back of Luis Jimenez's card as an example:

#15

Back of #15

Dan had 20 sets made up and each card of each set has the same handwritten number on the back.

Here's some other examples cards:

#18

#22

#23

#25

#27

#35

Dan has put the entire set checklist online at TradingCardDB.com.  I think he still has a couple sets available so if you're interested, contact him either through his blog or on Twitter.