Cards From Ryan

I wanted to do a post showing off some of the random cards I got from Ryan in this recent box.  Some of these were cards I specifically asked him to pick up for me while others were ones he surprised me with.

First up is a 1991 Calbee card of Motonobu Tanishige:

1991 Calbee #51

Here's a couple cards from the 1998 Future Bee set - that celebration card is for the Baystars winning the 1998 Central League pennant, not the 1998 Nippon Series:

1998 Future Bee #7

1998 Future Bee #C-2

Here's the front and back of the 1993 Tomy card commemorating the 1992 Nippon Series - that's Lions manager Masaaki Mori on the back of the card:

1993 Tomy #371

1993 Tomy #371

A 1994 Tomy card of Orix BlueWave manager Akira Ohgi:

1994 Tomy #101

Some of the cards he found for me completed projects of mine.  Here's the last three cards I needed for the 2004 BBM 1st Version insert set for the 2003 Asian Championship winning Japan National Team:

2004 BBM 1st Version #AJ16

2004 BBM 1st Version #AJ17

2004 BBM 1st Version #AJ14

This was the last card I needed to complete my 2001 BBM Tigers set:

2001 BBM Tigers #T83

I finished off two more BBM flagship sets with cards he found for me.  Here are the last two cards I need from the 1994 set and the last one I needed from the 2000 set:

1994 BBM #28

1994 BBM #19

2000 BBM #350

He picked up a bunch of cards towards completing a couple other projects.  I won't show all of these but here's some highlights from the 50-ish 1995 BBM cards he sent me:

1995 BBM #1

1995 BBM #358

1995 BBM #558

1995 BBM #585

1995 BBM #599

He found me about 15 cards from 1996, including the seven I needed to complete the Masaki Saitoh puzzle (again I'm not showing all of these):

1996 BBM #559

1996 BBM #595-603 fronts

1996 BBM #595-603 backs

He got me 12 of the 14 cards I needed from the 1999 BBM set, including ten cards from the Late Series Swallows cards.  Here's a couple of them:

1999 BBM #273

1999 BBM Late Series #616

1999 BBM Late Series #626

He found me yet another card from the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC set's insert set for the All Tournament Team:

2009 Konami Basebal Heroes WBC #W09A003

I've started trying to get all 30 of the serially numbered "Rising Stars" cards from the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set and Ryan found the Kensuke Tanaka card from it for me:

2000 Upper Deck Ovation "Rising Stars" #19

Ryan also surprised me with a bunch of random Epoch cards from the last few years:

2014 JPBA 20th Anniversary Vol. 2 #74

2017 Epoch Tigers Glorious Players #11

2017 Epoch Tigers Glorious Players #03

2017 Epoch JBPA Title Holders #39

2018 Epoch Buffaloes Stars & Legends #18

Those last three cards are parallel versions.

Speaking of parallels, Epoch did a parallel version of their 2010 1977 set that looked like Calbee cards from the same era.  Ryan sent me the card of Kazuyuki Yamamoto:

2010 Epoch 1977 parallel #RP23

He also sent me two more promo cards for the 2019 Epoch NPB set - only 419 more to go!

2019 Epoch NPB Promo #398

2019 Epoch NPB Promo #003

He also sent me a couple promo packs for the 2020 Epoch NPB set but I haven't opened them yet.

Lastly he sent me a 2007 Calbee "Corocoro Comics" promo card of Hichori Morimoto:

2007 Calbee Corocoro Comics Promo #P-4

2020 Epoch One

Among the items Ryan picked up for me were a bunch of Epoch One cards from last year.  Just to remind you - Epoch One is the Japanese version of Topps Now.  The cards are made available online for a limited time (3 days) and they only print up as many as are ordered.  Cards are 500 yen (a little less than $5) each including shipping.  For God only knows what reason Epoch only does these cards for a subset of them teams - the Baystars, Dragons, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers.  

Some of the cards I asked him to pick up were because of the events highlighted.  Here's pitcher Yuki Nishi of the Tigers homering on Opening Day last year (with the National League adopting the DH last year, the Central League was the only league in the world where pitchers batted in 2020):

#014

Rookie Toshiya Satoh of the Marines' first career hit was a game winner against the Buffaloes on June 27th: 

#112

Yuki Nomura of the Fighters got a walk off hit against the Hawks on July 2nd:

#109

Speaking of rookies getting their first hits, Takaya Ishikawa of the Dragons got his first hit on July12th:

#161

The Marines and Eagles had a wild game on July 28th where the Marines eventually won 13-12 on a walk off bases loaded hit-by-pitch.  Seiya Inoue hit three home runs in the game:

#213

On August 6th the Giants were getting slapped around by the Tigers and Yomiuri manager Tatsunori Hara did something that's extremely rare - he brought in infielder Daiki Masuda to pitch:

#267

On August 11th, Yuki Yanagita of the Hawks had a bizarre swing against the Buffaloes and ended up somehow hitting a home run on it:

#288

Yasuhiro Ogawa threw a no-hitter on August 15th:

#295

Takeya Nakamura of the Lions homered for the 200th time at the Seibu Dome on September 24th:

#463

I got cards commemorating two walk off grand slams - Munetaka Murakami of the Swallows on July 2nd and Keita Sano of the Baystars on July 24th:

#120

#208

Some of the other cards I asked him to pick up were because they showed players wearing alternate uniforms - just in case I finally start updating my uniform posts:

#396

#403

#458

#505

The final card I asked him to pick up for me was just because I thought it was a great photo:

#184

Card Of The Week March 7

I had mentioned a few months ago that former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters pitcher Masaru Nakamura was the only Japanese player in this past winter's Australian Baseball League.  Nakamura's team, the Brisbane Bandits, had published a card set and I was able to get his card from Shane, who along with Steve Smith are my main sources for Aussie cards.  Shane had mailed it out a few weeks ago and it showed up at my house last week.

Nakamura's card was not the only thing I got in the mail last week.  I finally received the box from Ryan yesterday.  I'm going to be busy over the next few weeks dealing with the roughly 2000 cards he sent me.

Spring Releases

Here's a quick round up of some recently released sets while I wait for that package from Ryan to show up - it was in New Jersey on Sunday and Washington, DC yesterday.  I'm figuring it will be here soon now.

- The official release date for Calbee's Series One set is March 22 but somehow it's usually available a few days before that.  This year's set is pretty much as expected - there's a base set of 88 cards that includes 72 "regular" player cards (six per team), 12 "Exciting Scene" cards (1 per team) and four checklist cards.  There are two insert sets (or premium subsets) - six "Legend" cards featuring players who retired at the end of last year and 25 "Title Holder" cards featuring players who either led their league in something or won an award last year (or both).  There is also a 12 card "Team Strikeout" box set available from Calbee's Japanese Amazon store (although I've never been able to find it there).  The checklist of the base set, the inserts and the box set are all on-line at Calbee's site.

- BBM's third "comprehensive" team set for the 2021 season is for the Chunichi Dragons and will be released in late April.  As usual, the base set will have 81 cards.  These 81 cards are split up into four groups - 67 cards for the manager and players, three cards for their last three first round draft picks, ten "Title Holder" cards and one "Great Comeback" card featuring Kosuke Fukudome.  There's a ton of insert cards - 77(!) in all - split into seven sets.  Four of those sets are not fully named, just described on the web page - there's a nine card "main player" set, a three card "relief pitcher" set, a three card set for young players and a three card set for "veterans you can rely on".  The other three are premium, serially numbered inserts - Phantom (20 cards), Esperanza (15 cards) and a new one called "Hyakka Ryouran" (24 cards).  There are also the usual collection of autographed cards available.

- Not to be outdone, Epoch has announced their first three 2021 team sets under their "Rookies & Stars" title.  These are all "reasonably priced" pack based sets (as opposed to Epoch's ultra high end sets where there's six cards to a box that retails for $150).  The Baystars set will be released on April 10th, the Swallows set will be released on April 17th and the Carp set will be out on April 24th.  The base set for each contains 36 cards (so they are not "comprehensive" team sets) and there is a "hologram" parallel for each card.  Each set also has 12(!) different insert sets.  Four of these are "Regular Printed Signature" sets ("Silver", "Gold", "Hologram" & "Variation Hologram") - there are 9 "Variation Hologram" cards and 18 each for the other three sets.  There are three 18 card "Metal Power" insert sets: "Silver", "Gold" (serially numbered to 50) and "Hologram" (serially numbered to 10) and three six card "Time To Shine Hologram" sets: "A" (serially numbered to 50), "B" (serially numbered to 15) and "C" (serially numbered to 5).  Finally there 6 "Gem" insert cards (each serially numbered to 15) and 6 "Black Gem" insert cards (each serially numbered to 5).  Each set also has a variety of autograph cards.  Each player in the base set has an "Authentic Autograph" card while a subset of the players also may have "Rookie Autograph" cards, "Star Autograph" cards and "1 of 1 Autograph" cards - there's a different count of these for each set.  The Carp set also has four uniform cards available.

- For the fourth year in a row, Epoch is releasing a flagship set under the name "NPB".  This is another "reasonably priced" pack based set.  The base set contains 444 cards - 432 cards of active players and managers (36 per team) plus 12 cards of OB players (1 per team).  I believe that one of the OB players will be Ichiro, making this his first appearance on a Japanese card since 2009 (with the exception of last year's ridiculously high end "#51 Ichiro Suzuki - ORIX BlueWave Super Luxury Baseball Card Collection" set).  There are three types of "kira" parallel cards - "regular" (72 cards), "silver foil" (48 cards) and "hologram foil" (36 cards).  There are also "Gem" insert cards available but I don't know how many there are.  The "hologram foil" parallels and the "Gem" inserts are serially numbered but the web page doesn't say how many of each there are.  There are also autograph cards available, including one for the OB players.  The set will be released on May 29th. 

Park Yong-Taek

Long time LG Twin Park Yong-Taek, the KBO's all time hits leader, has retired.  Park was drafted by LG out of high school in 1998 but it appears that this was just some sort of way that teams could "reserve" high school graduates as he went on to Korea University and didn't actually join the Twins until 2002.  

Park spent his entire 19 year career with LG.  He won a batting crown in 2009 and led the league in stolen bases in 2005.  He won the Golden Glove award four times (2009, 2012, 2013 and 2017) and played for the Korean National Team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic.  Besides hits, he is also the career leader in the KBO in games played, at bats and plate appearances.  

Oddly enough, he never led the KBO in hits in any season - he just steadily accumulated hits over his career.  His 2504 career hits are 295 hits more than Kim Tae-Kyun (3rd on the all time list), 348 more than Lee Seung-Yeop (6th) and 461 more than Lee Byung-Kyu (10th), each of whom spent several seasons in NPB.  You wonder if they'd stayed in Korea if one of them would be the career leader - especially Lee Seung-Yeop as he spent eight years in NPB.  Not to take anything away from Park.

Park's first baseball card appears to be a phone card from 2009.  His first "normal" card is from the unlicensed 2010 KBO "game" set but he appears regularly in the licensed sets issued by Duall/SMG/Ntreev between 2014 and 2016 and SCC from 2017 to 2020.  He did not appear in any of the 2006 WBC sets.  Here's all the cards I have of him:

2010 KBO Game Set #AT-002

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Two #SBC02-029

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Two #SBC02-029-SS

2015 Superstar Baseball Season Two #SBC1502-099-N

2015 Superstar Baseball Hell's Fireball #PA01-LG003

2016 Superstar Baseball Diamond Winners #PA02-LG001

2016-17 Superstar Baseball Black Edition #SBCBK-108-N

2016-17 Superstar Baseball Black Edition #SBCBK-043-AS

2017 SCC #SCC-01-LG15/N

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/142

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Red #SCCR-02R/040

2019 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR1-19/159

2020 SCC KBO Premium Collection #SCCP1-20/T19

Kazuki Yoshimi

Kazuki Yoshimi of the Chunichi Dragons announced his retirement at the end of last season.  Yoshimi spent a couple years playing for Toyota in the industrial leagues before he declared for the 2005 draft.  He and the Dragons entered into an agreement known as "reverse nomination" where a player could select the team he wanted to sign with and not actually be subject to the draft.  

He made his debut with the ichi-gun team in September of 2006 and pitched out of the bullpen in the Nippon Series that year.  He moved into the starting rotation in 2008 and rolled off a couple impressive seasons after that, culminating in perhaps his best season in 2011, when he went 18-3 with a 1.65 ERA.  He started to have elbow issues in 2012 and missed the second half of 2013 and most of 2014 after having Tommy John surgery.  Injuries and ineffectiveness would plague him over the rest of his career.

He was a four time All Star (2008-11 although he declined to participate in the 2008 games due to injury).  He led the Central League in Wins twice (2009, 2011), ERA once (2011) and shutouts four times (2008, 2009, 2011, 2012).  He won the Best 9 and "Pitcher Of The Year" awards in 2011.  He pitched for the Dragons in three Nippon Series - 2006, 2010 and 2011, although he didn't play in 2007, the only Series they won.  He won the "Fighting Spirit" Award for the 2011 Series.  

His first baseball card was in the 2006 BBM Rookie Edition set (#62) and he also appeared in that year's 1st Version set (#279).  His first Calbee cards were in the 2008 Series Three set - #205 and #LL-6 (the LL card was a "League Leader" subset card - he was included for leading the Central League in ERA as of the end of June, 2008).  Here's a selection of his cards:

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #62

2006 BBM 1st Version #279

2009 BBM All Stars #A41

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S59

2012 Calbee #T-06

2015 BBM Classic #055

2016 BBM Dragons Dash #07

2018 Epoch NPB #368

2020 BBM 2nd Version #367