Prestige Collectibles Auction

Been meaning to mention this since it started last week - there's a new Prestige Collectibles Auction going on until May 15.  Details are here.

One really cool item up for auction is a 1962 menko card of Larry Doby, when he played for Chunichi.  The auction description is incorrect when it says that Doby is the only US Hall Of Famer to have played in Japan as Rich Gossage played for the Hawks in 1990.  However, Gossage didn't have any cards, so Doby's the only one you can get a Japanese card of.

More new 2012 BBM team sets

Over the last couple weeks, BBM has announced this year's editions of the Carp, Giants and Marines team sets.  The Carp set has 109 base cards (including apparently one for Kenta Maeda's no hitter on April 6), a nine card insert set (Soul Of CARP) and various autograph and jersey cards (looks like for Kenta Meada and Yuya Fukui, including cards with autographs or jerseys for both).  The Giants set is a whopping 127 cards with (I think) two nine card insert sets (Young Giants and Super Metallic Giants) and memorabilia cards featuring up to four player's jerseys.  The Marines set has 99 base cards, a nine card insert set (Counterattack Of Marines?) and memorabilia and autograph cards (the memorabilia cards have jerseys of Yoshihisa Naruse and Yuki Karakawa - one each by themselves and one with both).

There's no release date listed for the Carp set.  The Marines set will be out in mid-May and the Giants set will be out in late-May.

In addition, BBM is releasing a box set to commemorate the Baystars being bought by DeNA.  Called "Reborn", the set will contain 28 cards - 27 cards for players (and manager Kiyoshi Nakahata) and one "special" card.  The "special" card will either be one of 12 "Newcomer 4 Hometown" insert cards or one of 10 possible memorabilia cards featuring jersey, bat or patch pieces from up to three players.  The set will be released in mid-May.

Card Of The Week April 29

So it looks like Atsunori Inaba wasted no time in getting hit #2000 - he did it in his first at bat in yesterday's game against the Eagles:
 

Looking at the list of milestones on the Yakyu Baka page I linked above, I'm amused to see that he got hit #1500 back in 2008 in his 1500th game played. I always love symmetry. Here's yet another Inaba card - his "Power Of Veteran" subset card from the 2008 BBM 2nd Version set (#734):

NST

After Yamakatsu and Nippon Ham, the other big card manufacturer of the late 1970's (besides Calbee of course) was NST.  Between 1975 and 1983, NST produced four large sets of 2 inch by 2 7/8 inch cards.  Technically I guess the cards are really stamps as they were intended to be pasted into albums that (I assume) were sold in conjunction with the packs of cards.  At least two of the sets had a parallel set of thicker stock cards also.  The sets were very Giants-centric - the last two featured only Giants players.  The fronts of the cards in all four sets are "pure card" - white border photos with no text whatsoever.

The first NST set was issued in 1975 to honor Shigeo Nagashima, who retired at the end of the 1975 season.  It was a 288 card set called "Mr. Baseball".  The set contains many cards highlighting Nagashima's career (including a bunch of Shukan Baseball Magazine covers) - in many ways this was the model for the set Mr. Giants set BBM produced in 1999 to commemorate Nagashima's career.  The remainder of the set contains mostly other Giants players, but there are some players from other teams.  The real highlight of the set is a handful of cards showing major league players with the Giants - there's a couple cards with Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson during the 1971 Orioles tour of Japan, a card showing Nagashima with Gene Mauch and a card with Tsuneo Horiuch and Ron Cey (unfortunately I have none of these).  The backs of all the cards were identical except for the card number.  There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards which were blank backed.  Here's a couple examples:

Shigeo Nagashima #1

Koichi Tabuchi #66

Back Of Tabuchi's card

Wrapper

NST issued a 388 324 card set called "Mr. Baseball 2" in 1976 1977.  Again, the cards are mostly Giants players although there appears to be a pretty good selection of players from other teams.  To some extent, the set was intended to honor Sadaharu Oh as there is a small subset dedicated to his records, although nothing like the amount of cards dedicated to Nagashima in the previous set.  The highlight of the set, however, is a card featuring Sadaharu Oh and Henry Aaron - the picture was probably taken when Aaron and Oh had a home run hitting contest in 1974.  Like the 1975 set, the backs of all the cards in the set were identical except for the card number - in fact I think the only real difference between the backs in the two sets is that the backs of this set were blue (despite my scanner deciding to scan it in black and white) - the text appears to be the same.  Here's a few cards:

Keishi Suzuki #4

Takashi Nishimoto #294

Back Of Nishimoto's card

Wrapper

After a hiatus of a year, NST issued a 264 card set in 1978 that was exclusively for the Giants.  Not only did they show the Giants on the field, there were a great many card showing the players off the field, both training in uniform and relaxing or traveling in street clothes.  The set also features cards of OB Giants players such as Victor Starffin and Eiji Sawamura (I think this is the first ever card of Sawamura but I could be wrong).  There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards that had "menko-like" backs showing a dice and a rock-paper-scissors symbol.  The backs of the regular cards were again very similar to the two previous sets - it looks like there's a difference in the last line of text.  Here's a couple examples:

Tadashi Matsumoto #169

Tadao Okada #263

Back of Matsumoto card

Giants Training #160

Shigeru Takada disembarking #50 (I think)

Back of parallel card

Wrapper

NST's final set with 288 cards was released in 1983 and it also is completely dedicated to the Yomiuri Giants.  I don't have any cards from this set, so I can't say too much about it.  It appears from Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" that the backs were a different format than the earlier sets although it is not clear if they are identical except for card number in the set itself.

Atsunori Inaba

Sometime this weekend, Atsunori Inaba of the Fighters most likely will get his 2000th hit - he homered yesterday for hit number 1999.  I thought I'd do a little retrospective on him in anticipation of his milestone (since I have time right now but might not later).

Inaba attended Hosei University from 1991 to 1994.  He was drafted by the Swallows in the third round of the 1995 draft (conducted in the fall of 1994).  He debuted for the Swallows during the 1995 season, appearing in that year's Nippon Series against the Orix Blue Wave.  (His BBM rookie card is #554 in the 1995 set, which I don't have, but he also appears in that year's Nippon Series set - #S20)

2011 Legend Of Tokyo Big 6 #095

1995 BBM Nippon Series #S20

He spent the 1995-96 offseason playing for the West Oahu Canefires of the Hawaiian Winter League with future fellow NBP players Gabe Kapler and Matt Skrmetta.

1996 HWL Canefires

He remained with Yakult through the 2004 season, returning to the Nippon Series again in 1997 and 2001. He set a record in the 1997 Series for more hits (10) in a five game series and won one of the "Outstanding Player" awards for that Series.

1997 BBM Nippon Series "Outstanding Player" #S61

2002 Calbee #095

He joined the Fighters before the 2005 season and has been in Sapporo ever since.  He's gotten a lot more playing time with the Fighters than he had with the Swallows, having gotten over 500 plate appearances every year in Hokkaido except his first while only once having more than that in his 10 seasons with Yakult.  He appeared in three more Nippon Series (2006, 2007 and 2009), winning the Series MVP award in for the 2006 Series.  He won the Pacific League batting championship in 2007 along with leading the league in hits.

2005 BBM 2nd Version 1st Version Update #562

2009 BBM 1st Version #100

Inaba made the All Star team twice when he was with the Swallows (1997 and 2001) and another 5 times (2007-11) with the Fighters.  He was the number one vote getter in 2009 and was MVP of the third All Star game in 2011.  He also made the post-season Best 9 team five times, once with the Swallows in 2001 and 2006-09 with the Fighters.

2001 BBM All Stars #A35

2007 BBM All Stars #A30

In addition, Inaba was named to Team Japan for both the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 World Baseball Classic.  He does not appear in any of the card sets Topps put out for the 2009 WBC but he does show up in the 2008 BBM Olympic team set.

2008 BBM Japanese National Team #JPN27

2012 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version

My 2012 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set showed up in the mail today from AmiAmi.  It's a 37 card box set featuring 36 "regular" cards and one special card.  As has been fairly standard the past few years, the 36 "regular" cards are split evenly between all six teams - each team has a team card and five player cards.  As usual, the photography is very nice.  Here's a couple examples (I'm trying something new with my scanner, so the images are a little more washed out than they should be):

#16

#26

#03

#12

The "special" card included in the set is either one of six possible "Tokyo Big Six Heroes" insert cards or an autographed version of one of the 30 player cards.  I lucked out and pulled an autographed Hiroshi Taki card (#21):

Each of the autographed player cards is serially numbered to 30 with the exception of Taki and Yuhei TakahashiTakanashi of Waseda - their cards are only numbered to 29.

All the regular cards can be seen here.

Pack Opening Videos

Jason alerted me recently to a fellow going by the name of Taka Tanaka Giants who is an American (I think) living in Japan who is posting videos of himself opening packs of Japanese baseball cards (and showing off stuff he's won in auctions) on YouTube.  Very cool to see the product come out of the pack and see what the insert and memorabilia cards look like (since I pretty much skip them because they're generally more expensive then I want to pay).

He also just started a blog.

Just out of curiosity, I did a quick search on YouTube to see what videos about Japanese Baseball Cards were out there.  There's a couple from Gwynar, who writes the amazing and indispensable YakyuBaka blog, talking about 2007 Calbee cards as well as some others by various people doing pack breaks or showing off stuff they are selling.

And then there's this, a commercial for Calbee from 1989: