Card Shops In Japan: Mint Odawara

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

NOTE - there's an updated post about the store's new location.

Odawara is a city in Kanto located southwest of Tokyo.  It's nestled between the Hakone Mountains on the one side and Sagami Bay on the other.  Since the shinkansen stops here it's a convenient gateway for tourists to go to the National Park that Mount Fuji is in.

Lower on the city's list of attractions in the Mint Odawara store,  conveniently located just a few blocks east of Odawara Station (and not far from Odawara Castle).  The store is on the third floor of the EPO shopping mall: UPDATE 10/8/2023 - Store moved as of August of 2023.  The store is now located on the second floor of the Odawara Ekimae Building which is a lot closer to Odawara Station than its old location.  The map at the bottom of this post has been updated for the new location. 

This is another store that's quite good for set building.  They had a fairly diverse selection of singles from older sets (at least from BBM) and their single prices are around 40 to 50 yen.  I do want to point out that their singles are organized by team rather than card number which can be a bit confusing (but is probably much easier for the store to maintain).

Ryan has spent this past summer working just a few blocks from this store and so has visited it quite often.   His comment about the store was that "they have a slightly different selection of cards from other shops, so I've found things as I've shown up. They won't have much newer product, as far as I can tell, and it seems that gaming cards and US products are their biggest sellers now."  I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to their US products but I will mention that this was the only card shop that I saw that had the 2018 Konami Baseball Collection cards.  I didn't see any older (pre-1991) cards here although I wasn't really looking for them.

The store itself was set up pretty well.  It has plenty of room and has a table that two people (like myself and Ryan) can comfortably sit at to go through boxes of cards.  I won't claim it was well organized - it took a little looking to figure out which boxes I wanted to go through and I had to ask (ok, I had to have Ryan ask) the shopkeeper for some help in tracking down where the box of singles for BBM's Real Venus sets were.  That said the shopkeeper was very friendly and helpful.

Here's a couple photos of the shop.  For some reason I only took photos of the outside of it:

The jigsaw puzzles are apparently part of the store as well.

I really liked this store.  I would have spent longer there but I needed to catch a train to Nagoya that day and I was only able to spend about 45 minutes in the store.  I'm not sure it'd be worth the trip if you were just staying in Tokyo (it's about a 30 minute trip on the Shinkansen or 60 to 90 minutes via non-bullet train) but it's very convenient if you're heading from Tokyo to Kyoto, Osaka and/or other points west.

Here's a map showing the location of the shop's location:

Trip Overview Part 12 - Day 15 - Tokyo

After a couple of very busy days involving traveling outside of Tokyo, I was looking forward to a couple low-key days for my final weekend in Japan.  My only firm plans for Saturday, June 8th was an afternoon game between the Swallows and Buffaloes at Meiji Jingu Stadium.   I was a little concerned about the weather since the forecast for the entire weekend in Kanto was calling for rain but in the morning at least it was just overcast.

Dan was still in town and hadn’t been to a couple of the stores I had already been to but they were ones I didn’t mind going back to so we made plans to meet up in Ikebukuro.  Since I had the afternoon time constraint I got moving a little faster than he did that morning and ended up at Mint Ikebukuro by myself not long after they opened.  After spending a little while there I walked the five or six blocks up to Coletre.  Dan by this time had made it to Mint Ikebukuro so after shopping at Coletre I walked back down to meet up with him.

Shortly after we got together it was time for me to head to the Swallows game.  After making some tentative plans to meet up after the game, I left him to his card shopping at Mint and caught a train to the stadium.

The last thing I expected to happen to me in Japan was to randomly run into someone I knew but as I was making my way to the exit at Gaiemman Station I caught sight of a tall American heading the opposite direction of the crowd.  It was Jim Allen, John E. Gibson’s partner with the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast (and like John a journalist - which is probably the better way to refer to both of them rather than podcasters!).  I called out “Hey Jim!” across the crowd and then - realizing that I had only met Jim briefly in 2013 and he might not recognize the person bellowing at him in a crowded subway station - I identified myself.  He said he knew who I was - he recognized me from the Facebook posts John and I had both put up the day before.  That was about the extent of our conversation - he was finished with his work at the stadium - so I think we finished with some “nice to see you”’s and kept moving in our respective directions.  I found out later he had interviewed Stefan Romero of the Buffaloes at the ballpark for the podcast that day - as I’ll get to in a minute Romero ended up having a very good game that day.

I exited from the station and walked the few blocks up to the stadium - basically following the same path I had taken on my first night in Tokyo 15 days earlier when I was staying at the Nippon Seinenkan Hotel across the street from Jingu.  When I was close to the stadium I encountered a small historic marker:

This apparently marks the location of the first bowling alley in Japan.  The building is long gone I guess and the monument sits almost inside a hedge at the entrance to the parking lot for the TEPIA Advanced Technology Gallery next door to the stadium.  I'm not a big bowler but I thought it was kind of a neat marker.

As I settled into my seat in the stadium my concerns about the weather turned out to be unnecessary.  Not only did it not rain but the sun came out and the skies cleared for a while, making me worry that I might end up sunburned.

Most of the activity in the game happened in the first three innings.  Orix got on the board in top of the first on a two run homer from Romero.  In the bottom of the inning the Swallows got a two run home run of their own from Tetsuto Yamada and for the first time I got to see the Umbrella Dance that Swallow fans do when the team scores:

The Swallows took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the second but Orix went back ahead for good in the top of the third on a three run home run from Romero.  The Swallows scored another run in the bottom of the inning and then there was pretty much no offense after that.  I did get to see Yamada steal a base to go with his home run - he was on his way to his fourth 30 home run/30 steal season in the last five years.  The final score of the game was Buffaloes 5, Swallows 4.  This would be the last ichi-gun game I would see on the trip.

The "Lucky 7" celebration was a little different at Jingu.  Instead of launching jet balloons, everyone does the Umbrella Dance like they do when the team scores.  I later learned that there's a prohibition on shooting off jet balloons in Tokyo-city so fans don't do it at either Jingu or Tokyo Dome.

You could see the new Olympic Stadium rising in the distance beyond the left field stands at Jingu:

After the game ended I headed over to Shibuya station.  I wanted to take a look at two card shops over there - Mint Shibuya and Card Fanatic.  Dan had gone to Coletre and Mint Shinjuku while I was at the game and was originally going to join me in Shibuya but there was a book he wanted to pick up in Jimbocho and as he was leaving the next day this was his only chance to get over there.

The crowds in Shibuya on a Saturday night were pretty overwhelming and I briefly entertained the notion of heading to Takadanobaba to again try to find Quad Sports' new location (especially since I didn't really expect either card shop to be all that interesting for me).  I decided that since I was there I might as well make the best of it and I made my way to each of the stores.  As expected, neither shop really had anything I was interested in and I called it a day, heading back to my hotel to rest up for my final full day in Japan.

Brad Eldred

I wanted to do a quick post on the retirement of Carp slugger Brad Eldred.  Eldred joined the Carp in mid-2012 after 11 seasons in major league organizations - mostly with the Pirates but he also spent time with the White Sox, Nationals, Rockies, Giants and Tigers.  His best season in Hiroshima was 2014 when he hit 37 home runs with 104 RBIs.  One of the other highlights of his time with the Carp was his hitting home runs in the first three games of the 2016 Nippon Series which the Carp ultimately lost to the Fighters.  The Carp did not renew his contract when it expired at the end of last season and he ultimately announced that he would retire last month.  The Carp have hired him to scout for them and held a retirement ceremony for him after yesterday's game.

Here's a handful of cards of him:

2013 BBM Bright Carp #13

2014 Front Runner Carp Season Summary #18

2015 Calbee #222

2016 BBM "Realization Of A Great Ambition" #17

2017 BBM Genesis #059

2018 Epoch NPB #239

As far as I know there are no cards of him from 2012.

One of my favorite things about him is that Google always translated the Japanese text of his name to "El Dread".

RIP Gene Bacque

Former Hashin Tigers pitching great Gene Bacque passed away this weekend at age 82.  The story at the link does a better job summarizing his career than I can so I'll just hit the high points.  He played for the Tigers from 1962-68 and spent a final season in Japan playing for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1969.  He went 29-9 with a 1.88 ERA in 1964 and was the first foreign pitcher to win the Sawamura Award (Kris Johnson of the Carp is the only other foreigner to win the award to date).  He threw a no-hitter against the Yomiuri Giants in 1965 and ended his NPB career with 100 victories.  He's one of only four foreign pitchers with at least 100 wins and is tied with Joe Stanka with more wins by an American.  (If you're wondering, Taiwanese pitchers Taigen Kaku and Genji Kaku are the other two foreign pitchers with over 100 wins - Taigen Kaku has the most with 117.)

There's only one known card of him when he was an active player - a 1967 Kabaya-Leaf card.  BBM only issued one card for him during their first 20 years (although he did have a "Nostalgic Heroes" insert card in the 1999 Tigers set) but he's had a bit of a renaissance in recent years.  He made seven appearances in BBM sets between 2012 and 2017 - about 16 cards in all if you count autographed, parallel and insert cards as well as base set cards.  Here's all the cards I have for him:

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #102

1994 BBM #537

2012 BBM No-hitters #39

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #03

2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition #28

2015 BBM Tigers 80th Anniversary #12

2016 BBM Spirit Of Legends #04

2016 BBM Fusion #034

2017 BBM Fusion #064

2017 BBM Fusion #064 Secret Version

Card Of The Week September 15

I've got kind of a busy weekend this weekend so I decided that I'd get ahead of things a little bit on Friday night and go ahead and prepare the "Card Of The Week" post for Sunday so I didn't have to really do anything but publish it that morning.  I was feeling good when I went to bed that night that even if I didn't get any other posts done this weekend, at least that was all set to go.

Then I woke up the next morning and learned that Yudai Ohno of the Dragons had thrown a no-hitter against the Hanshin Tigers.  So I went scrambling Saturday morning to get a new "Card Of The Week" post together.  Here's a card of Ohno from the BBM Dragons team set from 2011, his rookie season (#D80):

On the plus side I've got a "Card Of The Week" post in the can already for some future week.

2019 BBM Team Sets

The bulk of the package I got from Ryan last week contained the last six BBM "comprehensive" team sets that I needed for this year - the Dragons, the Hawks, the Tigers, the Fighters, the Buffaloes and the Eagles.  He had previously gotten four of them (the Marines, the Swallows, the Carp and the Baystars) for me and given them to me when we met up in Tokyo.  I bought the other two myself in card shops - picking up the Giants set at Coletre and the Lions set at Mint Hakata.

As has been standard for the past five years, the base set for each of BBM's team sets contain 81 cards.  There are 66-70 cards for the manager and all the players on the 70-man roster.  Every set except the Hawks and Marines have a single card dedicated to their mascots that doubles as a checklist card.  The Marines have two cards for their mascots - one that features multiple mascots and also doubles as a checklist and one the features the Mysterious Fish.  The Hawks don't have a mascot card at all.  For the first time since I've been paying attention, no set has a separate team logo/checklist card.  The rest of the base sets after the player cards and the mascot card(s) is filled in with two to four subsets.  Here's how each team's set breaks down:

Team	Player/Manager Cards	Mascot Cards	Checklist	Subsets
Chiba Lotte Marines	70	2	0	Last Voyage (3), Elite Club (3), Pump Up (3)
Chunichi Dragons	69	1	0	Combo (2), D's Emblem (9)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks	70	0	0	Fresh Prince(2), Get Over (6), Spring Big Deal (6)
Hanshin Tigers	68	1	0	New Breed (3), Fabulous Ones (4), Key Role (5)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	69	1	0	Newcomer (2), Glorious Victory (3), Best Contribution (4), Dominican Spirit (2)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	70	1	0	King Is Coming (3), Quick Boost (3), Early Impact (4)
Orix Buffaloes	69	1	0	Super Nova (2), Winning Formula (3), Just Do It (3), Orimen (3)
Saitama Seibu Lions	67	1	0	College Connection (4), New Blue Blood (4), Pole Position (5)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	68	1	0	Newcomer (3), No Surrender (4), Meet The Target (5)
Tokyo Yakult Swallows	69	1	0	Brilliant Future (5), No Doubt(3), Record Makers (3)
Yokohama DeNA Baystars	69	1	0	Limelight (5), Lockdown (3), Hop, Step, Jump (3)
Yomiuri Giants	66	1	0	Giant Four (4), Glorious Number (4), Growing Hope (3), G-Genuine (3)

Each set contains some 30-35 players who did not appear in BBM's flagship sets this year.  Here's an example card from each set featuring a player who is only in the team sets this year (so far):

2019 BBM Marines #M62

2019 BBM Dragons #D64

2019 BBM Hawks #H12

2019 BBM Tigers #T43

2019 BBM Carp #C58

2019 BBM Fighters #F45

2019 BBM Buffaloes #B15

2019 BBM Lions #L61

2019 BBM Eagles #E10

2019 BBM Swallows #S18

2019 BBM Baystars #DB19

2019 BBM Giants #G63

Huh, picked the same three guys for the Tigers, Carp and Fighters as I did last year.

The sets were all released between late March and late July.

As always I want to express my thanks to Ryan for picking these up for me.

Cards From Ryan

I wanted to do one more post on cards I got from Ryan last week.  These are just some random cards he found for me.

I spent most of my recent Japan trip thinking that the only card I need to complete the 1998 BBM set was Hirokazu Ibata's rookie card (it turns out I also need the Hawks team card).  I went through card shops from Tokyo to Fukuoka but I could not find one.  After i got home I found one offered for 200 yen on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and I asked Ryan to pick it up for me:

1998 BBM #389

Another card that I search for unsuccessfully was the final "secret" version card I needed from the 2017 BBM 2nd Version set - the one for Ami Inamura.  I found this on Yahoo! Japan Auctions as well but it was much more expensive - 1600 yen!  I justified the high price to myself for a couple reasons - I wasn't able to find the card anywhere and it was the final "secret" version card I would ever go out of my way for.  I now have 14 "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards of Inamura - 3 cards from 2nd Version sets, 3 cards from Fusion sets, 2 cards from Epoch JWBL sets and six SCM cards.

2017 BBM 2nd Version #FP05 (Secret Version)

I've been pretty much ignoring Epoch's "comprehensive" team sets this year except for when they feature either players or coaches not in BBM's team sets.  Their Dragons set this year (like last year) included a card for farm team manager Michihiro Ogasawara:

2019 Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars #08

I had written before about an oddball 1998 Yoshinobu Takahashi card I'd gotten at Mint Ponyland in Nagoya.  It was part of a four card set that appeared to be a combination of a celebration of the Tokyo Dome's 10th Anniversary and an ad for a card show at the Dome in December of 1998.  I found a complete set on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for something like 480 yen so I asked Ryan to pick it up for me:

The box from Ryan also included the remaining six BBM team sets that I didn't get while I was in Japan - either from Ryan directly or by buying in a card store.  I'll be covering them in my usual BBM team set round up in the next week or so.