Miscellaneous Card Pickups

I wanted to do a somewhat quick post about a bunch of random cards that I picked up on the trip.  Most of these were cards on my want list (which is much smaller now than before I left).

There were nine BBM team sets from between 2003 and 2007 that I was trying to complete.  I had gotten unopened boxes for most of them back in the day and decided a few years ago to get the cards I had missed on them.  I ended up completing six of them (2003 Giants, 2004 Baystars, 2005 Dragons & Swallows, and 2006 Swallows & Tigers) and reducing the number of cards I needed for two of the other sets to two each (2004 Giants & Tigers).  I had only needed one card from the 2007 Tigers set but it eluded me.  I'm not going to show all the cards I got from these sets but here's a single card from each:

2003 BBM Giants #036

2004 BBM Baystars #YB58

2004 BBM Giants #G45

2004 BBM Tigers #T36

2005 BBM Dragons #D59

2005 BBM Swallows #S78

2006 BBM Swallows #TY44

2006 BBM Tigers #053

I got most of these at either Bits in Nagoya or Mint Hakata in Fukuoka.  I had looked at Quad Sports but didn't find anything on my want list - Ryan eventually pointed out that he had already searched my want list there!

I had compiled a list a few months back of all the guys who had appeared in BBM's high end sets (Diamond Heroes, Touch The Game and Genesis) without having in the same year's flagship set.  I decided that I didn't want to get all the cards on the list but just the ones I found interesting for one reason or another (player I liked, only card for a foreign player, etc).  I don't remember how many cards I had originally decided to get but by the time I left for Japan, there were 23 cards I was still looking for.  Between Bits, Mint Hakata and Mint Odawara, I got all 23 of them.  Here's eight of those, one card from pretty much every set I got cards from:

1996 BBM Diamond Heroes #186

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #154

1998 BBM Diamond Heroes #60

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #105

2001 BBM Diamond Heroes #5

2005 BBM Touch The Game #009

2013 BBM Genesis #023

2014 BBM Genesis #048

I've become a big fan of the "Great Record" insert sets from BBM's Fusion sets.  I've gotten the complete insert set with my base set every years since 2019 so I decided to go back and get the ones from 2016 to 2018 as well.  The bulk of these I picked up at Quad Sports along with one or two that I got at Coletre.  I needed 65 of the 72 total cards (24 each year) and I came home with 63 of them.  Here's one card from each set:

2016 BBM Fusion #GR24

2017 BBM Fusion #GR21

2018 BBM Fusion #GR19

The other set that I'm trying to complete is the 1999 BBM Mr. Giants set.  This is a biographical set for Shigeo Nagashima but it includes cards of rival pitchers, teammates and players who he managed as well.  I needed 56 cards - roughly half the set - and I came home with 47 of them (and Ryan has since picked up the other nine for me).  I got most of these at Bits with a couple others at Quad Sports and Mint Hakata.  Here's three of the cards:

1999 BBM Mr. Giants #G1

1999 BBM Mr. Giants #G43

1999 BBM Mr. Giants #G82

The 2012 BBM Fighters team set had a three card subset entitled "Kamagaya Rookies" that included cards of three rookies wearing Nippon-Ham's farm team uniforms.  I've had two of the cards - Go Matsumoto and Takumi Ohshima - for a while but tracking down the last - Kensuke Kondoh - has been difficult.  When I've seen it, it's been much more expensive that I was willing to pay.  Luckily, Mint Hakata had it for a very reasonable price.

2012 BBM Fighters #F70

The final cards from my want list are ones that Ryan had picked up for me - the last three "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards I needed from the 2021 BBM Fusion set:

2021 BBM Fusion #FP47

2021 BBM Fusion #FP42

2021 BBM Fusion #FP35

The rest of the cards I'm going to show are just ones that I came across that appealed to me.  First up are three "secret version" parallels from the 2020 BBM 30th Anniversary set.  What's interesting about these is instead of being a photo variant, they're "design variants" - they use the same photo as the original card but the card design mirrors the 1991 BBM design instead of the "regular" 30th Anniversary card design.  I picked these up at Mint Urawa:

2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #124 "Secret Version"

2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #158 "Secret Version"

2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #180 "Secret Version"

Back in 2008 and 2009, BBM issued small figurines of players with baseball cards.  I think the figurines only came with the cards in 2009 and they only did them for a handful of the teams.  Deanna shared some photos with me and I did a post about them way-back-when but I had never seen any in the wild until I was at Bits.  Well, to be entirely accurate, I haven't seen the figurines in the wild but Bits had a couple of lose cards so I picked one up:

2009 BBM Dragons Figure Card #D-07

It's difficult to tell from the scan but the card is much smaller than standard size.  It's about 1.25 inches wide and a little over 3.5 inches high.

The next batch of cards I picked up while happily rummaging through boxes of cards at G-Freak one afternoon.  There's no real rhyme or reason to why I got them, just random cards:

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #BN07

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #BN18

2007 BBM Draft Story #LS7

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #BS6

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #BS3

2003 BBM Tigers Victory Road #35

2003 BBM Tigers Victory Road #49

2002 BBM 1st Version #PP6

2010 BBM 1st Version #GG02

This last card is the only non-BBM card in this post.  It's from a 2018 set that Epoch did in conjunction with "The Museum Of Hanshin Koshien Stadium" called "Footprints Of The Tigers".  I think I picked this up at Mint Odawara:

2018 Epoch Footprints Of The Tigers #26

2024 BBM 1st Version Set

 2024 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size: 372 cards numbered 1-336, CE01-CE36
Cards Per Team:  28 (team card, manager + 26 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards:  N/A
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Cross Earth (36)
Inserts:  Japonism (12), Prince Of The Team (12), Amazing (24), 3D Cross Earth (12, #'d to 25), Cross Foil Signing (6 - all Giants, #'d to 15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Shoki Murakami, Roki Sasaki, Munetaka Murakami and Shunpeita Yamashita.  Each jersey card is serially numbered to 300 plus a parallel patch version numbered to 20.  There are also two different two player jersey cards (the two Murakamis on one and Sasaki and Yamashita on the other) numbered to 20 each with a parallel patch version of each numbered to 5.  There's also a "quad" memorabilia card with all four players on it serially numbered to 10 with a parallel patch version serially numbered to 5.  There are four different types of autographed card available - "Cross Signature", "Special Signature", "Japonism" and "Buyback Autographs".  The last features "buyback" BBM cards for 20 current and former players including Takahiro Arai, Munetaka Murakami, Atsunori Inaba and Go Matsumoto.  There is also a "Combo Autograph" card featuring Kaito Shimomura and Hayato Tsunehiro.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" short printed alternate photo version.  Another 12 have an "ultra secret" much more rare short printed alternate photo version and 12 others have a "super ultra secret" extremely rare short printed alternate photo version .  108 regular players cards (9 per team) have seven facsimile autograph parallels - silver, gold (#'d to 100), "holo blue" (#'d to 75), holograph (#'d to 50), red (#'d to 25), purple (#'d to 10) and sky blue (1 of 1) - this includes the "secret" versions of the cards as well (and I assume the numbering is separate but I don't know that for sure).  Additionally each of the 108 cards also has a "kira" parallel.  71 of the rookie cards (which I think is all of them) have eight numbered parallel versions - "Silver" (#'d to 300), "Blue" (#'d to 200), "Gold" (#'d to 100), "Pink" (#'d to 75), "Light Green" (#'d to 50), "Holo Foil" (#'d to 25), "Purple" (#'d to 10) and "Sky Blue Foil" (1 of 1).  The "Cross Earth" cards have two parallel versions - "Holo" (numbered to 100) and  "1 of 1".  There are four parallel versions for the "Prince Of The Team" inserts - "Gold" (#'d to 200), "Light Blue" (#'d to 100), ", "Light Green" (#'d to 40) and "Pink" (#'d to 25). The "Japonism" cards have seven parallels - "Gold" (#'d to 300), "Green" (#'d to 200), "Blue" (#'d to 100), "Holo" (#'d to 50), "Red" (#'d to 25), "Royal Purple" (#'d to 10) and "Sky Blue" (1 to 1).

Notable Rookies: Natsuki Takeuchi, Ryuki Watarai

I'm late getting around to writing about this set this year.  It was released back in late April so it's been out for over two months.  Normally I would have bought this set when it came out via ZenMarket or some other proxy bidder but it seemed kind of silly to pay the proxy fee as well as pay for international shipping to receive the set just a couple days before I left for Japan.  It made a lot more sense to get the set when I got to Japan, either by having Ryan pick one up for me from Yahoo! Japan Auctions or finding one in a store.  As it turned out, Ryan had gotten one for me before I arrived and handed it to me when we met up in Tokyo.

BBM issues their flagship set in three parts and this is the first part (which I guess is pretty obvious since it's called "1st Version").  For the tenth year in a row, it's a 372 card set which includes 324 "regular" player cards (27 per team including the manager), 12 team checklist cards and 36 cross set subset cards - the theme of them this year is "Cross Earth".

BBM has done an impressive job the past few years of combining an attractive card design with really good photography and this set is another example of that.  Here's a handful of sample cards - these aren't necessarily the best photos but I think a pretty good representation of what the cards in the set look like:

#153

#218

#075

#094

#314

#204

#114

One of the impressive things about BBM is their sets are always as up-to-date as possible.  This year's 1st Version set not only includes cards of players who changed teams over the winter like Sachiya Yamasaki, Hotaka Yamakawa and Cody Ponce, it also includes cards of many of the new import players like Franmil Reyes, Jesus Aguilar and Alex Dickerson.  Obviously all of those photos on those cards were taken this spring - as was the photo of Yuki Okabayashi on the card above (he switched his uniform number to #1 over the winter).  And unlike other manufacturers whose sets came out months after this set, all of the cards of the 2024 rookie class show them in action in training camp as opposed to posed shots from the team's introductory press conference or photo day (with exception of Sho Kusaka of the Dragons who had Tommy John surgery in January - his photo is a posed shot).  Here's rookie Natsuki Taneuchi of the Lions as an example:

#291

That said, there's at least a couple of guys who switched teams over the winter who aren't in this set - Neftali Soto of the Marines is the first person who comes to mind.  I assume he (and others like him) will be in the 2nd Version set when it gets released in August.

Here's what the card backs look like - pretty much the same as they've been for years:

#047 (Shogo Akiyama)

I picked up two of the "secret version" photo variant parallels at Quad Sports while I was in Japan.  To be fair, the photos on the base cards are pretty good too.  In each of the following pairs, the base card is on the left while the "secret version" is on the right:

#175

#283

As has been the case for the past few years (going back to 2016 actually), the photos on the team checklists were all taken during training camp.  They're all nice although I don't think any of them really stand out.  Here's the one for the Tigers - I'm not quite sure what this is:

#325

The "Cross Earth" cards are half of BBM's annual "cross set subset" - the other half will be in the 2nd Version set.  As usual the fronts of these feature a photo of a player superimposed on some common background while the backs show the original photo.  The background this year appears to be a lunar landscape with the Earth in the background.  They're not unattractive but I got bored with this concept ten years ago so I'm pretty much "meh" about them:

#CE23

The backs are a little different this year.  The player's photo appears in the outline of the Earth rather than just a standard rectangular photo:

#CE23

As always, you can see all the cards in the set (including parallels and inserts) over at Jambalaya.