Best Card Shops In Japan?

I recently came across a YouTube video by someone called the "Sports Card Investor" who went to Japan and reported on the "Best Card Shops In TokyoJapan" (UPDATE - as Zippy Zappy points out in the comments, the video actually says "Tokyo" not "Japan".  Not sure how I convinced myself it said "Japan" but it doesn't).  Now, obviously that's a pretty subjective topic as what appeals to one collector may not appeal to another but I found the whole thing kind of grating.  Here it is if you want to watch it:

He visits six locations in Tokyo - Mint Lab, Mint Games (in Ikebukuro), Mint Akihabara, a Pokemon Center, Mint Shibuya and a Pikachu Sweets/Pokemon Card Game station.  It's kind of an odd group since half of those sell game or Pokemon cards rather than sports cards although to be fair, he did label it "Best Card Shops" and not "Best Baseball Card Shops".  Of the sports card shops, I've been to Mint Akihabara and Mint Shibuya (although before they moved to their current location).  I have also been to Mint Lab's predecessor Mint Kanda although Mint Lab is a much different store than Mint Kanda was.  I would not rate any of those stores as "the best in Japan" or even " the best in Tokyo" but again, those are subjective ratings.  For me, the "best stores in Japan" are Quad Sports, Coletre, Mint Ikebukuro, Mint Urawa, BITS! and Mint Hakata - along with Wrappers if they're still actually open - and two of those aren't in Kanto.

I think what I find annoying is the narrator's focus on Western cards.  "Oh, wow, look at all the Kobe cards!"  "Hey, you can get American football cards here!"   I guess I don't understand the point of traveling halfway around the world to look for cards you can find in the US.  I feel like he just gives the NPB and J-League cards a passing glance, except for the Shohei Ohtani 2013 rookie cards which he drools over.  And he's surprised there are sumo cards.  I mean, there are plenty of oddball sports sets in Japan that would surprise someone - curling, women's bowling, beach volleyball - but sumo?  Of course there are sumo cards.

I was amused that the guys at Mint Lab gifted him a box of 2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection, saying it was more beautiful than Topps Chrome Refractors.  Yeah, maybe, but it's still ugly.  I would have rather watched his kids bust that box than the ones they did - one kid had a couple boxes of Donruss football cards and the other had a Topps Chrome soccer box.  Again - why go halfway around the world to get cards you can go across town for.

Bottom line I guess is that this is a style of collecting that doesn't appeal to me.  And that's fine, it's a big hobby.  But I don't think this video really gives a good sense of what the card market is like in Japan.

Latest COMC Order

I did another order from COMC recently to pick up some more old Calbees.  I had placed the order a few weeks back and I'd kind of forgotten what I was getting so it was a bit of a surprise when the cards showed up earlier this week.  I thought I'd do a quick post about what I got.

First up was two cards from the "monster" 1975/76/77 set.  I was always surprised to rediscover that I didn't have any Calbee cards of Hal Breeden so I've solved that problem now (although I have a couple Calbee's with him making a cameo appearance on them):

1975/76/77 Calbee #1200

Always hard to pass up a Calbee Yutaka Enatsu Tigers card:

1975/76/77 Calbee #340

I also picked up a couple 1978 Calbee "Regular Type II" cards.  I didn't have any of these before now.  I thought I was getting some with an earlier order this year from COMC but it turns out they had mislabeled the cards.  The "Regular Type II" cards look the same as the "Regular Type I" cards except that the two lines with the player's name and team are in one of the corners of the front of the card rather than the bottom center:

1978 Calbee Regular Type II Takenori Emoto

1978 Calbee Regular Type II Shigeru Kobayashi

The final card I got was not a Calbee card and it wasn't a vintage card but it's still pretty cool - an autographed card of Hayato Terahara from last year's Epoch Baystars Premier Edition set.  Twenty years ago this card would have run me a lot more than the $10-ish this cost me as Terahara was once a huge prospect:

Oddball 70's Cards

I saw someone selling these two oddball NPB cards on Ebay a few weeks ago and I couldn't resist picking them up.  They're not something I'd ever seen before and I don't believe they're in Engel's catalog although I may have missed them.  

The first card is labeled "Central League 2nd Basemen".  The top row is Toshiyuki Mimura (#9 of the Carp), Morimichi Takagi (#1 from the Dragons) and Katsuhiro Nakamura (#14 of the Tigers) while the bottom row is Mitsuyoshi Masukawa (#48 of the Swallows), John Sipin (#11 of the Whales) and Takeshi Ueda (#2 of the Giants).

The other card is labeled "Pacific League Outfielders".  The top row has Yutaka Fukumoto (#7 of the Braves), Kyosuke Sasaki (#5 of the Buffaloes) and Masahiro Doi (#3 of the Lions) with the bottom row having Sumio Hirota (#3 of the Orions), Hiromitsu Kadota (#27 of the Hawks) and Junzo Uchida (#7 of the Fighters).

I've pretty much narrowed the set down to most likely being from 1975.  It can't be any earlier than that since that was the first year that Doi was with the Lions and Uchida was with the Fighters.  It's unlikely it's from later than 1975 because 1975 was the last year that Masukawa (who never actually played second base for Yakult) wore #48.  

These were advertised on Ebay as cards but now that I have them in hand I can see that they are actually stickers.  Each photo can be peeled off the sheet as well as the team flags on the bottom.

I don't know anything else about these but I assume that there are more of these for other positions.  I'd be interested in finding out more about these.

Card Of The Week July 30

Four years after the Hawks stunned the baseball world by signing American amateur pitcher Carter Stewart, Jr., Stewart last Wednesday earned his first victory at the top level in NPB.  It was his fifth start of the season and despite not having notched a win until now, he's pitched pretty well in those games, posting a 1.57 ERA with 30 strikeouts in 28 2/3 innings.  Jim Allen recently interviewed Stewart for the Japan Weekly Baseball Podcast as well as an article for Kyodo News detailing Stewart's struggles over the past few years.  Both the podcast (as always) and the article are worth checking out.

I don't have any 2023 cards of Stewart yet so here's his only flagship card from last season - #326 in Epoch's NPB set:

Panini Suganos

I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that Panini had included redemption cards for autographed cards of Tomoyuki Sugano in their recent Donruss set.  It turns out that that's not the only appearance of Sugano in a Panini set so far this year as he has also popped up in the Prizm set that was released a few weeks ago.  I was first made aware of it by a tweet from BITS!, the Nagoya card shop and after a little looking around I discovered there were actually two cards of him in the set - a bast card and an insert card.  I picked both of them up off Ebay for $6-ish total for the two cards - it was kind of funny that the base card cost more than the insert.  Here's the front and back of both cards:

I don't like unlicensed cards and I don't like shiny cards so I can't say I'm a big fan of these.  I find it kind of funny that the stats on the back of the two cards don't match - the stat line on the base set card says he threw 147 innings in 23 appearances last year with 104 strikeouts and a 3.12 ERA while the insert card says 149 innings in 24 appearances with 105 strikeouts and a 3.38 ERA.  It turns out that they're both correct although the insert card is a little misleading.  If you look at Sugano's Baseball-Reference page, you'll see that the base card has his ichi-gun stats from last year while the insert card has his stats from both ichi-gun and the two innings he pitched at ni-gun.  I do find the prospect of Sugano being "the next big import from Japan" pretty dubious - he'll be 33 at the end of this season, he tried to sign with an MLB team a few years ago and got no offers that he liked and he really hasn't pitched all that well the past few seasons.  

I will be curious to see if Panini includes him (or any other NPB players) in any additional sets this year.

Bad News From Calbee And Other New Sets

Time to get caught up on the latest announcement of new sets coming out in the next few months...

- Calbee earlier this week finally officially announced the release of the inexplicably delayed Series Two set.  As Calbee told me back in mid-June, Series Two will be "released in limited quantities on August 21st and October 9th".   Calbee's news release goes on to say that there will be no Series Three this year so for the second time in seven years, Calbee's issuing their set in only two Series.  The base set for Series Two will have 60 "regular" card (5 per team), a 12 card "First Win" subset and four checklist cards.  There will also be 24 "Star" insert card and Calbee's Amazon.co.jp will be selling a limited edition 12 card "Team Stealing King" box set.  The checklist for all the cards is here.  I'm not sure why they are listing two release dates but I know Sean had had issues finding Series One for a few weeks after it was originally released so it may be that August 21st is the "limited quantity" release date and October 9th is when it will be more generally available.  I have no idea why Calbee's decided to sabotage their set this year - perhaps Elon Musk bought them?

- I mentioned the last time I did a "New Release" post that I thought Epoch was done with their "Premier Edition" team sets this year.  I was not correct as they've announced two more of them.  The Fighters set will be out on August 26th and the Buffaloes set will be out on September 24th.  The Fighters base set has 41 cards (31 active and 10 OB players) and the Buffaloes base set has 40 cards (37 active and 3 OB players).  Both sets will have the same massive amount of insert cards as all the other "Premier Edition" sets (and I'm just going copy-paste this from all the other posts I've done for the earlier sets) - "Regular Printed Signature (Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Gold)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Gold)" (9 cards), "Metal Power (Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Gold)" (18 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram A)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram B)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram C)" (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards), "Gem" (6 cards) and "Black Gem" (6 cards).  Both sets have five possible autograph cards available but they aren't the same in each set - the Fighters have "Authentic", "Rookie", "Star", "One Of One" and "Baseball" while the Buffaloes have "Combo" cards rather than "Star".

- The second of BBM's two annual cheerleader/dance squad sets - "Dancing Heroine - Mai" - will be released in late September.  Like the earlier "Hana" set, it's an 80 card set featuring cheerleaders from the Hawks, Eagles, Lions, Marines, Fighters, Swallows, Tigers, Giants and Dragons.  There are also nine "Two Shot" insert cards and a number of autograph cards.  I believe that there's no overlap between the two sets but I don't know that for sure.

- BBM's releasing the ninth in their OB team history sets in late September.  The base set for the Lions History 1950-2023 set will have a similar structure to the previous eight sets - 90 cards split between seven "Team History" cards, 71 cards of OB Lions and 12 cards of active Lions players.  There will also be three insert sets - 12 "Lions Dynasty" cards, nine "Team Record" and 12 premium "Treasure" cards - and, of course, lots of autograph cards.  With this set there's now only three teams who BBM has not done a "History" set - the Baystars, Eagles and Fighters.  I don't have any inside information but I'd be willing to bet that they'll do a "Fighters History" set later this year since it's the 20th year the team has been in Hokkaido and next year they'll do an "Eagles History" set since it'll be their 20th season in existence.  They might do the Baystars next year also as it'll be their 75th season and it'll have been five years since BBM did their 70th Anniversary set.  Of course, BBM could also do a "Kintetsu Buffaloes History 1950-2004" set next year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the team's demise.

- BBM has also announced the 2023 edition of their multi-sport Infinity set which will be out in late October.  The size of the set has not been announced but it looks like it will include 28 NPB players including OB players like Sadaharu Oh and Koji Yamamoto and active players like Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Munetaka Murakami.  There's also a card of former JWBL player Yu Katoh and independent league player Hiroyuki Takagishi of the Tochigi Golden Braves (who is also a comedian).  There are literally dozens of other sports represented in the set including volleyball, pro basketball, rugby, tennis, BMX, wrestling and karate.

RIP Taka Miura

Giants and Lions farmhand Takashi "Taka" Miura has passed away at age 45 due to colorectal cancer.  Miura was a pitcher for the Toyo University team in the late 90's/early 00's and - along with his battery mate Shinnosuke Abe - helped the team win the league championship in his final season in the fall of 2000 when he went 7-2 and won the league MVP and Best Pitcher awards along with winning a Best 9 award.  He was the Giants' third pick in the 2000 draft out of Toyo University, two picks after Yomiuri took Abe.

He got into 49 games in middle relief with the top team in his rookie season of 2001, going 3-2 with a 3.41 ERA but he developed a case of the "yips" in 2002 and had difficulty throwing strikes.  He ended up being the first pitcher to be ejected under the new "dangerous pitch" rule introduced in NPB that season and only pitched in three games at the ichi-gun level.

Miura had been a good hitter in college, frequently appearing in the lineup as a DH on days he wasn't pitching so in 2003 Tatunori Hara decided to have him switch to being a position player.  His first hit as a non-pitcher was also his first home run, hit in September of 2003 against the Dragons.

The Giants used him as a utility player, playing in both the infield and the outfield, but he didn't spend a lot of time with the top team - only about 52 games over the five seasons from 2003 to 2007.  They released him following the 2007 season and he almost retired after initially drawing no interest from any teams after attending the 12 team tryout that fall.  But after Kazuki Fukuchi left the Lions for the Swallows, Seibu came calling and he spent the last two seasons of his career with them.  They released him after the 2009 season and, after again drawing no interest after the 12 team tryout, he retired as a player.

He visited his old high school, Urawa Gakuin, after he retired and was encouraged to became a teacher and coach for the baseball team by his old head coach.  He spent a couple more years back at Toyo University to get his teaching license and then was hired on at his old school.  He was able to take advantage of a change in coaching requirements.  Previously former professional players needed to have spend two years teaching before they could become high school coaches but the new rule allowed them to start coaching if they had had the necessary training.  He continued as a coach at his old school until he was diagnosed with cancer last year.  He was able to briefly return to work earlier this year but he got too sick to continue last month.

Miura's first baseball card was in the 2001 BBM set (#284).  There's actually two different versions of this card - the original one listed him as "Takashi Miura" while the corrected one lists him as "Taka Miura".  TCDB lists 23 cards for him although several of those are parallels or autograph cards.  He appeared in BBM's Giants team set every year from 2001 to 2007 and in their Lions team sets in 2008 and 2009.  His other rookie cards from 2001 are from BBM's Diamond Heroes set and Konami's Field Of 9 set (he has two cards in that set).  His only other flagship appearance was in the 2002 BBM 1st Version set.  He never had a Calbee card.  He also appeared in some team issued sets although only one of those is listed on TCDB.  Here's all the cards I have of his:

2001 BBM #284 (original version)

2002 BBM 1st Version #39

2003 BBM Giants #051

2004 BBM Giants #G65

2005 BBM Giants #G062

2006 BBM Giants #G062

2007 Giants Team Issue #54

2009 Lions Fan Club #21