If you recall, a month ago I reported that Calbee's Series Two this year had been delayed by the fact that the potato crop in Hokkaido had failed this spring due to typhoons that hit the island last summer and that Calbee had had to halt production of much of its snack lines because they didn't have enough potatoes to make chips from. I'm happy to report that Calbee's website is now reporting that the Series Two set will be released on or about September 4th. The base set has 72 player cards (six per team), 12 "Draft Pick" cards featuring the 1st round draft pick for each team and four checklist cards for a total of 88 cards. There's also the ubiquitous 24 card (2 per team) "Star" insert set. The "Lucky Card" redemption set is a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" set that features the Opening Day starter for each of the 12 teams. As always, Calbee has the checklist for the set available on-line.
With Series Two being delayed by roughly 2 1/2 months you may be asking yourself what this means for Series Three which typically is released in mid-September. The answer is...I don't know. I've sent a message off to Calbee this morning asking about Series Three but I've not gotten an answer yet. It would be somewhat disappointing if there were no Series Three this season since that would also mean that there were no "regular" player cards for Shohei Ohtani, Tetsuto Yamada and Yuki Yanagita among others.
BBM has also recently announced a couple new team specific boxed sets - "Young Carp" and "Young Tigers". Both of these box sets are from BBM's "Authentic Edition" series and contain 26 cards - 25 cards for the base set and one "special insert" card that's either a memorabilia card or an autograph. The 25 players in the base set are all "young" players on the team - born after April 1990 in the case of the Carp and after April 1991 in case of the Tigers. There are nine possible memorabilia cards for each set - I think they're all jersey cards in the case of the Tigers but there's a Seiya Suzuki bat card available with the Carp set. The autograph cards include players who aren't in the base set (so they aren't necessarily young). The sets will be out in late August and the MSRP on them is 6000 yen. The sets are limited to 2000 apiece.
Monday, August 7, 2017
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Card Of The Week August 6
Hitoki Iwase of the Dragons got into his 950th game today which now gives him the record for most pitching appearances in NPB history, passing Hall Of Famer Tetsuya Yoneda. He got the save in the game against the Giants which extends his record for most career saves in NPB to 404.
Iwase was Chunichi's' second round pick in the fall 1998 draft (Kosuke Fukudome was the 1st round pick). He had an outstanding rookie season in 1999 working middle relief for the CL pennant winning Dragons, going 10-2 with an ERA 1.57 in 65 games. In another season that might have won him the Rookie Of The Year award however 1999 was also Koji Uehara of the Giants' rookie season and he went 20-4 and led the CL in strikeouts with 179. Uehara won the award and I suspect Iwase finished a distant second although I haven't found the vote tally anywhere on-line.
Iwase did win the "Middle Relief" award in 1999 with a total of 28.15 points. I don't know how this total is calculated but I think it has something to do with number of appearances, number of hold points and number of saves. Here's his card commemorating this achievement from the "Leaders" subset of the 2000 BBM set (#26):
Iwase was Chunichi's' second round pick in the fall 1998 draft (Kosuke Fukudome was the 1st round pick). He had an outstanding rookie season in 1999 working middle relief for the CL pennant winning Dragons, going 10-2 with an ERA 1.57 in 65 games. In another season that might have won him the Rookie Of The Year award however 1999 was also Koji Uehara of the Giants' rookie season and he went 20-4 and led the CL in strikeouts with 179. Uehara won the award and I suspect Iwase finished a distant second although I haven't found the vote tally anywhere on-line.
Iwase did win the "Middle Relief" award in 1999 with a total of 28.15 points. I don't know how this total is calculated but I think it has something to do with number of appearances, number of hold points and number of saves. Here's his card commemorating this achievement from the "Leaders" subset of the 2000 BBM set (#26):
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Tokyo Rocks
BBM stopped doing card sets for the Tokyo Big Six collegiate league after 2013 but it turns out that there is kinda-sorta another outfit doing cards for the league. The catch is that they are virtual cards that only exist on the league's official mobile phone app.
The app is called "Tokyo Rocks" and is available for both Apple and Android platforms. Here's how it works. You get 10 points every day by opening the app and basically checking in (I think you get 100 points if you check in at Jingu Stadium). The cards cost 10 points each. You cash in your points and you randomly get a card. For the past two years there have been a total of 66 cards - 11 for each of the teams in the league. The 2016 cards were available until early April this year (or until you updated the app on your phone). Since then all you can get are the 2017 cards. (The switchover corresponds to the start of the Tokyo Big Six season this year).
The cards do not have backs and there's no way to trade them with other people so they're just kind of a curiosity.
Here's some example cards from 2016:
And here's some example cards from the 2017 set. You can see that the card design didn't change. There's at least a couple players who have the same picture on both their 2016 and 2017 cards:
I didn't get the entire 2016 set but I pooled resources with Dani (who I had learned about the cards from) to generate a nearly complete list of cards. Some of the players in last year's set were drafted last October and are currently playing in NPB.
We also pooled resources on the 2017 cards so I could generate another list:
There's a little weirdness in this year's checklist - some of the players don't have uniform numbers and there's a "blank" card for one of the Meiji cards - apparently they recalled one of the cards.
The league started doing these cards back in 2015. Dani wasn't quite sure but she thinks there were eventually 13 cards for each team that year but they added more cards as the year went on. Here's a screenshot she sent me of the 2015 cards - I didn't attempt to put together a list of the cards:
I want to thank Dani for all her help with teaching me how to get these cards and providing me with screen shots of all her cards so that I could create the checklists for the 2016-17 cards.
The app is called "Tokyo Rocks" and is available for both Apple and Android platforms. Here's how it works. You get 10 points every day by opening the app and basically checking in (I think you get 100 points if you check in at Jingu Stadium). The cards cost 10 points each. You cash in your points and you randomly get a card. For the past two years there have been a total of 66 cards - 11 for each of the teams in the league. The 2016 cards were available until early April this year (or until you updated the app on your phone). Since then all you can get are the 2017 cards. (The switchover corresponds to the start of the Tokyo Big Six season this year).
The cards do not have backs and there's no way to trade them with other people so they're just kind of a curiosity.
Here's some example cards from 2016:
And here's some example cards from the 2017 set. You can see that the card design didn't change. There's at least a couple players who have the same picture on both their 2016 and 2017 cards:
I didn't get the entire 2016 set but I pooled resources with Dani (who I had learned about the cards from) to generate a nearly complete list of cards. Some of the players in last year's set were drafted last October and are currently playing in NPB.
We also pooled resources on the 2017 cards so I could generate another list:
There's a little weirdness in this year's checklist - some of the players don't have uniform numbers and there's a "blank" card for one of the Meiji cards - apparently they recalled one of the cards.
The league started doing these cards back in 2015. Dani wasn't quite sure but she thinks there were eventually 13 cards for each team that year but they added more cards as the year went on. Here's a screenshot she sent me of the 2015 cards - I didn't attempt to put together a list of the cards:
I want to thank Dani for all her help with teaching me how to get these cards and providing me with screen shots of all her cards so that I could create the checklists for the 2016-17 cards.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Card Of The Week July 30
Last Wednesday the Chunichi Dragons were cruising along with a 10-0 lead over the Swallows going into the bottom of the seventh when all the wheels fell off. The Swallows scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh on a two run home run by Yuhei Nakamura then exploded for eight runs in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game up. They ended up winning 11-10 on a walk off home run by pinch hitter Shoitsu Ohmatsu in the bottom of the tenth. Here's a video with the painful highlights (if you don't know, I am a Dragons fan) courtesy of NPB Reddit:
This is only the fourth time in Japanese professional baseball history that a team has come back from a ten run deficit and the first time in almost 20 years. This was the second pinch hit walk off home run Ohmatsu had hit this year - he's now the fourth player in NPB history (and first in 40 years) to have two pinch hit walk off home runs in one season.
This is Ohmatsu's first season with the Swallows after 12 seasons with the Marines. Lotte let him go at the end of last season while he was recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered with the farm team in late May. The Swallows gave him a tryout during spring camp and ended up signing him to a contract. The only cards I know of him in a Swallows uniform are from the BBM and Epoch Swallows sets, neither of which I have yet. I did recently pick up a Konami card of him from when he was with the Marines in a lot of assorted cards I got on Ebay. This is a "Special" card (I don't know enough about Konami's cards to know if that's the official name of the subset or not) from the 2008 Baseball Heroes Black Edition (#B08S032):
This is only the fourth time in Japanese professional baseball history that a team has come back from a ten run deficit and the first time in almost 20 years. This was the second pinch hit walk off home run Ohmatsu had hit this year - he's now the fourth player in NPB history (and first in 40 years) to have two pinch hit walk off home runs in one season.
This is Ohmatsu's first season with the Swallows after 12 seasons with the Marines. Lotte let him go at the end of last season while he was recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered with the farm team in late May. The Swallows gave him a tryout during spring camp and ended up signing him to a contract. The only cards I know of him in a Swallows uniform are from the BBM and Epoch Swallows sets, neither of which I have yet. I did recently pick up a Konami card of him from when he was with the Marines in a lot of assorted cards I got on Ebay. This is a "Special" card (I don't know enough about Konami's cards to know if that's the official name of the subset or not) from the 2008 Baseball Heroes Black Edition (#B08S032):
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Card Of The Week July 23
Japhet Amador of the Eagles has been having a good weekend. Yesterday the big fellow became the first Eagle ever to hit home runs in three consecutive at bats:
Then in today's game, Amador lead off in the bottom of the ninth in a tied game and proceeded to untie it:
I was surprised to discover that Amador did not have a card in BBM's 1st Version set this year (obviously I missed this fact when I was looking at who was missing from the set a few weeks back). His only cards so far this year are in BBM's Eagles team set (which I don't have yet) and a team-issued Eagles set. I expect that he'll show up in BBM's 2nd Version set next month.
Here's a card of him from the "Newcomer" subset from last year's BBM Eagles team set (#E74):
Then in today's game, Amador lead off in the bottom of the ninth in a tied game and proceeded to untie it:
I was surprised to discover that Amador did not have a card in BBM's 1st Version set this year (obviously I missed this fact when I was looking at who was missing from the set a few weeks back). His only cards so far this year are in BBM's Eagles team set (which I don't have yet) and a team-issued Eagles set. I expect that he'll show up in BBM's 2nd Version set next month.
Here's a card of him from the "Newcomer" subset from last year's BBM Eagles team set (#E74):
Saturday, July 22, 2017
More New Stuff
Here's some information on some recently announced sets...
- BBM's annual high end set Genesis will be released in mid-September. It has a 120 card base set - 108 player cards (9 per team) and 12 checklist cards. There are a number of parallels for each of the player cards but the website doesn't have any details. There are three 12 card insert sets - Elite Of Nine (which apparently are plastic), Star Burst (holo foil?) and Cross Squall (Holographic processing). I think that each of the insert cards are serially numbered to 50. The big thing for Genesis of course is the "premium" insert cards - of which there is one in every 12,000 yen (~$108) box. These include autograph cards, memorabilia cards (jersey, patch, hat, etc) and "booklet" cards. Some of the cards have multiple autographs or multiple pieces of memorabilia.
- Epoch has announced two more of its modestly priced team sets - this time for the Tigers and the Giants. The base set for each of them will have 36 cards. The sets appear to have the same features as the other six Epoch team sets - photo variants for all the cards, a parallel version of the primary base set, some sort of insert cards and scratch off cards that give you points that can be redeemed for autographed cards. I'm not sure but I think that both of these sets will have multiple parallels for the base set cards. The Tigers set will be out on August 19th and the Giants set will be released a week later on the 26th. This brings the total number of team sets done by Epoch this year to eight - they've done the entire Central League but only the Lions and Hawks from the Pacific League. I am curious about whether they'll do any or all of the remaining four teams - the Marines, Fighters, Buffaloes and Eagles.
- Epoch is releasing a set on the more expensive side of the ledger in honor of the 35th Anniversary of the Seibu Lions winning their first Nippon Series in 1982 (their first Series under Seibu that is). The set is sold in boxes containing two packs of three cards each for 14,040 yen (~$126). Each box is guaranteed to contain at least two autograph cards. The base set has 44 cards, all of which have a parallel version. There are what looks like six different types of autograph cards. All the players in the set have autograph cards. The 44 cards include Lions players who were not on the 1982 team like Fumiya Nishiguchi and Kiyoshi Toyoda. The set will be released on August 26th.
- I'm not entirely sure about some of the details about this next release, including who made it and when it's getting released but there's a set coming out dedicated to former Baystars pitcher Daisuke Miura who retired at the end of last season. Since the set is described of consisting of "trading mini color paper" I think that it's being released by Hits, who issued a couple sets of "trading mini color paper" for the Baystars, Carp, Hawks and Swallows back in April. It looks like the set contains 16 "cards" - 12 "normal" ones and 4 "special" ones which have foil autographs. There's also a parallel version of the "special" cards available. (It's possible that this set was released last winter but for whatever reason just showed up in Discount Niki's card listings recently.)
- Topps recently released their Allen & Ginter set for this year and it (like their Museum Collection last month) features a handful of WBC relic cards. There are seven cards for Samurai Japan members - "World Baseball Classic Relic" cards for Shintaro Fujinami, Takahiro Norimoto, Tomoyuki Sugano, Tetsuto Yamada and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and "Mini World Baseball Classic Framed Relic" cards for Yamada and Tsutsugoh. This is kind of disappointing as all five of the Japanese players with relics in this set had relics in the Museum Collection. Still hoping for a decent WBC set but it's looking less likely with every release.
- BBM's annual high end set Genesis will be released in mid-September. It has a 120 card base set - 108 player cards (9 per team) and 12 checklist cards. There are a number of parallels for each of the player cards but the website doesn't have any details. There are three 12 card insert sets - Elite Of Nine (which apparently are plastic), Star Burst (holo foil?) and Cross Squall (Holographic processing). I think that each of the insert cards are serially numbered to 50. The big thing for Genesis of course is the "premium" insert cards - of which there is one in every 12,000 yen (~$108) box. These include autograph cards, memorabilia cards (jersey, patch, hat, etc) and "booklet" cards. Some of the cards have multiple autographs or multiple pieces of memorabilia.
- Epoch has announced two more of its modestly priced team sets - this time for the Tigers and the Giants. The base set for each of them will have 36 cards. The sets appear to have the same features as the other six Epoch team sets - photo variants for all the cards, a parallel version of the primary base set, some sort of insert cards and scratch off cards that give you points that can be redeemed for autographed cards. I'm not sure but I think that both of these sets will have multiple parallels for the base set cards. The Tigers set will be out on August 19th and the Giants set will be released a week later on the 26th. This brings the total number of team sets done by Epoch this year to eight - they've done the entire Central League but only the Lions and Hawks from the Pacific League. I am curious about whether they'll do any or all of the remaining four teams - the Marines, Fighters, Buffaloes and Eagles.
- Epoch is releasing a set on the more expensive side of the ledger in honor of the 35th Anniversary of the Seibu Lions winning their first Nippon Series in 1982 (their first Series under Seibu that is). The set is sold in boxes containing two packs of three cards each for 14,040 yen (~$126). Each box is guaranteed to contain at least two autograph cards. The base set has 44 cards, all of which have a parallel version. There are what looks like six different types of autograph cards. All the players in the set have autograph cards. The 44 cards include Lions players who were not on the 1982 team like Fumiya Nishiguchi and Kiyoshi Toyoda. The set will be released on August 26th.
- I'm not entirely sure about some of the details about this next release, including who made it and when it's getting released but there's a set coming out dedicated to former Baystars pitcher Daisuke Miura who retired at the end of last season. Since the set is described of consisting of "trading mini color paper" I think that it's being released by Hits, who issued a couple sets of "trading mini color paper" for the Baystars, Carp, Hawks and Swallows back in April. It looks like the set contains 16 "cards" - 12 "normal" ones and 4 "special" ones which have foil autographs. There's also a parallel version of the "special" cards available. (It's possible that this set was released last winter but for whatever reason just showed up in Discount Niki's card listings recently.)
- Topps recently released their Allen & Ginter set for this year and it (like their Museum Collection last month) features a handful of WBC relic cards. There are seven cards for Samurai Japan members - "World Baseball Classic Relic" cards for Shintaro Fujinami, Takahiro Norimoto, Tomoyuki Sugano, Tetsuto Yamada and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and "Mini World Baseball Classic Framed Relic" cards for Yamada and Tsutsugoh. This is kind of disappointing as all five of the Japanese players with relics in this set had relics in the Museum Collection. Still hoping for a decent WBC set but it's looking less likely with every release.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Georgia On My Mind
Back in 2010, BBM did some cards as a tie-in with Georgia Coffee, a coffee drink made by Coca-Cola in Japan that is sold in cans. You would get two cards with each can you bought. The cards were smaller than the standard card size. Gen from YakyuBaka (which of course is now YakyuDB) did a post about the cards he got. Apparently there were 60 possible cards which were issued in pairs - so for example the two cards that Gen got - Shohei Tateyama and Toshiya Sugiuchi - are always paired up together. All 60 cards are for active players.
I never got any of these Georgia Coffee cards but I did get a couple cards from another set that they did. Apparently they also did a "Legend" set containing all OB players. I did a post on the pack that I had gotten back in 2010. I picked up a couple more the other day in a lot of Japanese cards that I got on Ebay which made me look into these cards again. The two new cards I got were for Yutaka Takagi and Kazuyoshi Tatsunami:
The design of the cards is the same as the 2009 BBM Legends set, a set which I believe was distributed in a series of magazines (possibly Shukan Baseball). I started wondering if BBM had done a miniature version of the Legends set for the Georgia Coffee cards but a little research quickly disabused me of this notion - first Takagi doesn't appear in the Legends set and second the cards in the Legend set use different photos:
I really don't know much else about these cards. There were at least 12 of them and I think that like the cards for the active players they were issued in set two card pairs since the pack I got in 2010 that contained Sadaharu Oh and Masayuki Kakefu also contained this little flyer:
I wonder if the pack that the Takagi and Tatsunami cards came out of had a little flyer with those two cards on it.
I never got any of these Georgia Coffee cards but I did get a couple cards from another set that they did. Apparently they also did a "Legend" set containing all OB players. I did a post on the pack that I had gotten back in 2010. I picked up a couple more the other day in a lot of Japanese cards that I got on Ebay which made me look into these cards again. The two new cards I got were for Yutaka Takagi and Kazuyoshi Tatsunami:
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| #L11 (Yutaka Takagi) |
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| #L12 (Kazuyoshi Tatsunami) |
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| 2009 BBM Legends #073 (Tatsunami) |
I wonder if the pack that the Takagi and Tatsunami cards came out of had a little flyer with those two cards on it.
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