1995 Densho Ichiro "Big Card"

I got a message from someone recently, asking me if I could identify a card he had.  He said he'd picked the card up in the early 2000s from someone who frequently traveled to Japan.  He included the following two photos showing the front and back of the card:

To be clear, the "card" is embedded in the upper center part of the larger sheet.  It has perforated edges, clearly intended to be punched out of the sheet.

The card owner included a few more details about the card:

• The card itself measured 6.75" x 4.75" with the full sheet being 9" x 7"
• The card stock is thinner than a normal baseball card but thicker than a typical magazine page

I had never seen anything like this before but my first impression was that this had been issued in a magazine of some sort.  The fact that there was something that looked suspiciously like page numbers on it ("13" in the lower left corner of the front and "14" in the lower right corner of the back) supported that theory.

I reached out to Gary Engel to see what he had to say about it.  Gary had never seen it before either but he was able to quickly figure out several things:

According to what it says on the card, it must have been an insert in a 1995 issue of Dengeki Shonen Magazine.  According to Japanese Wikipedia, Dengeki Shonen Magazine was produced from September 1994 through September 1996.  It was a Nintendo Gaming Magazine, but also contained comics having nothing to do with gaming.  According to Wikipedia, the concept of combining comics with Nintendo was a failure, and publication ceased after only two years.  I have the idea it was a monthly magazine, but I couldn't find out for sure.

The back of the card mentions that this card is the first of a series of Big Cards and that the series will continue in future issues.  The card is related to a contest in which those who can answer the four trivia questions about Ichiro on the back can receive free 10 card packs of 1995 BBM Baseball.  

I looked on Yahoo Japan and there aren't any copies of any issue of Dengeki Shonen Magazine for sale.  Therefore, maybe it is a rare magazine and thus the Ichiro is a rare card.  Apparently, most Nintendo gamers of the era weren't baseball fans. 

Gary also expressed surprised to continuously discover cards he'd never seen before.  "Even after being closely involved with Japanese baseball cards for nearly 40 years, I keep finding additional issues that were unknown to me on a weekly basis!"

I want to thank the owner of the card for reaching out to me about this and Gary for figuring out where it was from.

2004 BBM Chiba Lotte Marines Toppo set

I got an email the other day from Dan.  Well actually it was a group email sent to myself, Jason and Ryan.  Dan had picked up a BBM card of Seung-Yeop Lee from 2004 and was having difficulty identifying the set.  To complicate matters, Dan not only wanted to know what set the card was from but he wanted a complete checklist for the set to add to The Trading Card Database so that he could get the card graded.  He sent along the following scan of the front and back of the card:

Jason, Ryan and I were all stumped.  My first thought was that it was an insert card from the 2004 BBM Marines set but it didn't match what was in Engel.  Not only was the numbering prefix wrong but Lee wasn't card #10 in any of the insert sets.  Ryan and I both postulated that it could be some sort of related promotional set, especially since the image on the card resembled the one on Lee's bat card from the set:

Image Swiped From Yahoo! Japan Auctions

But typically BBM's promo sets are clearly marked as promo sets so this didn't seem all that likely.

Ryan came up with the breakthrough today.  He somehow discovered the set was called "千葉ロッテマリーンズチョコ付録カード" which translates roughly to "Chiba Lotte Marines Choco Appendix Card".  Doing a Google search on this gives you a link to an old website of a collector looking to trade for Marines cards.  He had one extra card from the set and was looking for two others.  As it turned out, I know the collector - he's a Marines fan named Takashi that I've done a couple trades with, most recently about a month ago.  I sent Takashi an email asking about the card and he provided a wealth of information about the set.

The set is actually a 10 card food-issued set printed up by BBM.  The cards were given away with packages of a chocolate candy called "Toppo" that was (and apparently still is) made by Lotte.  The cards were only given away in AM/PM convenience stores in the Kanto region.  Takashi pointed out that because it was a limited distribution the cards are difficult to find.  He provided the complete checklist for the set that Dan has already uploaded to Trading Card DB as well as another image of a card from the set (#MP9):

This set was not in either Engel or Sports Card Magazine so thanks to Dan, Ryan and Takashi, there's a previously unknown set that's now cataloged.