A Brief History Of NPB Collectible Card Games - Part 2 - Konami

Konami did collectible game cards for NPB for the better part of 23 years.  They had two separate stints with the first one starting in 2000 and going to either 2013 or 2014 and the second stint running between 2018 and 2022.

Their first set in 2000 - called "Field Of 9" - was a doozy.  It contained 1866 base cards and was issued in six series in both 2000 and 2001 (Engel identifies the set as "2000-2001 Konami Field Of 9").  There are also dozens of parallel issues for the cards as well.  The card backs were all the same so I assume the game play involved somehow hiding your cards from your opponent.  The cards were sold in packs although I think there were "Starter Boxes" available that had 66 cards in them - I know because I had one - but I don't remember if they had packs in them or not.

Back of the Field Of 9 cards

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00B-464

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00T-125

2000 Konami Field Of 9 #FON00T-522 Parallel

Engel's old price guides (before he switch to the "Vintage Editions" that don't cover any sets after 1990) never mentioned it but it appears that there was a "Field Of 9" set in 2002 - or the 2000-01 set continued into 2002.  I have one Field Of 9 card with a copyright date and card number that imply that it was from 2002.  I believe this is an "SP" parallel version of the card:

2002 Konami Field Of 9 #FON2CA-1938

Konami replaced "Field Of 9" with "Prime Nine" in 2002.  All of these cards had the same backs as well.  They issued "Prime Nine" sets through 2005 although there appear to have been multiple sets most years, including versions that were sold in team packs.  The main 2002 set was sold in three series ("volumes") while the other three were essentially issued in two series (Engel separates the 2004 and 2005 editions into separate "First Edition" and "Second Edition" sets).  The really interesting thing about the "Prime Nine" cards is that I believe that they are the only CCG sets that have included memorabilia and/or autographed cards.  There were jersey cards available in packs of the 2003 set as well as the "Starter", "All Star" and "Booster" packs for the 2004 set.  There were bat cards available in the "Special Team Edition" packs in both 2003 and 2004 and the 2004 packs also included autographs.

I don't have a lot of the Prime Nine cards and most of what I have is from the 2002 set(s).  Here's some samples of what I have:

Back of the Prime Nine cards

2002 Konami Prime Nine #PN02T2-113

2002 Konami Prime Nine "Tatics" #PN02T1-TA17

2002 Konami Prime Nine #PN02T2-091 Foil Parallel

2002 Konami Prime Nine Star Card #PN02T2-ST004

2002 Konami Prime Nine VS #PN02T1-VS02

2003 Konami Prime Nine #PN03T1-181 Parallel

2003 Konami Prime Nine Total Results #PN03TA-031 Parallel

2005 Konami Prime Nine Special Team Packs #PN05TE-058

Konami introduced the "Baseball Heroes" line in 2005 and I believe they continued it until they took  several years off from from doing baseball games and cards in the mid 2010's, stopping in either 2013 or 2014.  These cards were used somehow in a video games although I'm not sure if they were online or in arcades.  The big difference with these cards is that there was player information on both sides of the cards.  There were a dizzying number of sets issued each year - "White Edition", "Black Edition", "Power Up Version" and "Opening Version" were some examples - and after a while it got hard to keep track of them.  

During this time period, Konami also released cards under the name "Powerful Baseball" and "Baseball All Star's" (yes, "Star's" - that's not a typo) but I don't know if there was an associated game with these sets.

What follows here are a bunch of cards I have from various Konami sets from 2005 to 2012.  I think I'm only sharing one card from each set that I have represented in my collection but, as I've mentioned before, these sets get very confusing.  I'm pretty sure some of these are insert cards.  I'm also unsure of some of the set names after 2007 (where Engel's last non-vintage guide left off):

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes New Black Edition #C05B051

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old Black Edition #B05B093

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old White Edition #B05W113

2006 Konami Powerful Baseball #P06-034

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 Black Edition #B06B147

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 White Edition #B06W160

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #B07B064

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 White Edition #B07W009

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Highlights #B07H006

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B08B046

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B08W167

2008 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #C08S017

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B09B082

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #C09B049

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B09W155

2010 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B10RB065

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B11RB135

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B11RW117

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Power Up Version #D11RB113

2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Draft #B11DR010

2011 Konami Baseball All Star's #BA1101-062

2012 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B12RB018

2012 Konami Baseball Heroes White Edition #B12RW041

It's probably pretty obvious that I'm not a big fan of Konami's cards but there's one major exception - the 2009 Baseball Heroes WBC Version set.  I've said before that this was the best set ever done for a World Baseball Classic.  It had a 253 card base set featuring the full rosters of the four semi-finalist teams (Japan, South Korea, the United States and Venezuela) and 12 players from each of the other twelve teams except Panama which only had eight.  The set also featured two 12 card insert sets - "All Tournament Team" and "Special" (which featured three players from each of the semi-finalist teams).

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version #W09R095

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version Special #W09S001

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC Version All Tournament Team #W09A011

Konami also issued a much smaller set for the 2013 WBC but this was only an 11 card insert set featuring players from the Japanese team.  I'm not entirely sure but I think this was associated with the "Extra Version" set (based on what's on the cards).  These are remarkably rare - I didn't even know they existed until 2022, some nine years after they were published.

2013 Konami Samurai Japan #B13SJ004

After a hiatus of a couple years, Konami returned to the baseball game card game in 2018 with their "Baseball Collection" cards.  These cards were both used in a baseball video game found in arcades as well as being dispensed by the game as reward for either playing or winning it.  Konami's web page about the game is long gone but their videos about it are still around - this post of mine has two of them.

There was basically one set released each year in multiple series.  It looks like they'd be issued from March of one year until February of the following year.  The sets had a LOT of cards - my analysis of the checklist for the 2021 set implied that there were on the order of 1600+ cards issued between March of 2021 and February of 2022 although I might not have accounted for duplicate listings at Suruga-ya.
The player cards themselves came in several different varieties - "N", "R", "SR" and "P" which I think meant "Normal", "Rare", "Super Rare" and "Premium".  I'm not sure if each player had all four types.

Konami did the "Baseball Collection" cards for five years, ending in 2022.  Here's some sample cards from each year.  I'm showing one of each variety for each year although I only have all four varieties for two of the five years:

2018 Konami Baseball Collection #201810-N-G006-00

2018 Konami Baseball Collection #201810-R-C051-00

2019 Konami Baseball Collection #201900-N-B037-00

2019 Konami Baseball Collection #201900-R-G018-00

2019 Konami Baseball Collection #201910-SR-E069-00

2019 Konami Baseball Collection #2019C9-P-L060-00

2020 Konami Baseball Collection #202000-N-DB021-00

2020 Konami Baseball Collection #202000-R-F008-00

2021 Konami Baseball Collection #202100-N-DB29-00

2021 Konami Baseball Collection #202116-R-M017-00

2022 Konami Baseball Collection #202200-N-DB063-00

2022 Konami Baseball Collection #202200-R-S055-00

2022 Konami Baseball Collection #2022C4-SR-S005-00

2022 Konami Baseball Collection #2022C0-P-DB006-00

More Baseball Women

We now preempt our normally scheduled programming...

My original plan this evening was to publish the second in my series of posts about NPB Collectible Card Games.  The post is all written and I'm about halfway done with editing the 50-ish(!) scans for it.  But two things happened that are causing me to postpone finishing that post.  The first, and biggest, is that I received my latest package from Ryan today.  It's a little bittersweet as it's the last big package that I'm ever going to get from him, what with me not getting much new stuff anymore.  The second is that I learned that this is "Women In Baseball" week, and, amongst the ten pounds or so of Japanese baseball card goodies that Ryan sent me were a number of cards of female baseball players.  I'm busy the next two evenings so if I wanted to do a post about these cards duing "Women In Baseball" week, I need to do it now.  So without further ado...

First up are two cards from the 2011 BBM GPBL set ("GPBL" stands for the "Girl's Professional Baseball League", which was the original name of the "Japan Women's Baseball League" or "JWBL"):

2011 BBM GPBL #18

2011 BBM GPBL #55

I also received a number of JWBL cards produced by AIAIO.  I've expressed some confusion about the checklists for these cards in the past and what I received today doesn't help much.  I got eight cards from the 2013 set but they're only for three different players.  There's three cards for Miki Atsugase of South Dione:

All three cards have the same number on them (0192-4936) but obviously there's two different card designs here.  I believe those are real autographs on the card - they look like they were signed with Sharpies.

I got four cards of Asami Kawabata that, again, have the same card number (0227-1925).  Three of the cards share the designs from the Atsugase cards but the fourth is a little different.

I have four other AIAIO cards from 2013.  Two of them appear to use the same design as the first card from each of these groups (the ones that aren't autographed) but the other two share a different design.  So there's apparently four different designs for these cards.

The last 2013 card is kind of interesting.  That year the league put on something called the "Victoria Series" in which they basically merged North Reia and East Astraia into the All East team and West Flora and South Dione into the All West team for a nine game series (which was won by the All East team).  This card shows Shino Kokubo of North Reia playing for All East:

I also got two 2014 AIAIO JWBL cards:

These are the only 2014 AIAIO JWBL cards that I have and they share a similar design so I'm not confused about them.  At least until I get some more...

The last AIAIO card I got was from 2016:

I only have one other AIAIO card from 2016 and it uses a completely different design so I'm confused again.

I went to a JWBL game in 2019 and was on the lookout for baseball cards but I didn't see any.  I think AIAIO did cards for the league that year but I've never gotten any.  There was a 2019 card in the box from Ryan but it's not from AIAIO.  I think it's some sort of team issued card given away to members of Kyoto Flora's fan club:

The JWBL folded following the 2020 season and women's professional baseball in Japan has been in kind of disorganized state ever since.  At least three NPB teams - the Lions, Tigers and Giants - have established women's teams and a number of the stars from the JWBL have ended up on those teams.  I've looked around for any baseball cards for these teams but there doesn't appear to be much.  I was aware that there were cards for the Tigers Women's Team that were given away with bento boxes at their games but I couldn't find any for the longest time.  The one exception was the guy on Mercari that Ryan picked up the Miura cards from - he had a Tigers card of her but he wanted something like $68 for it which seemed excessive.

I eventually came across one 2024 card and two 2025 cards:

As far as I can tell, none of these three ever played in the JWBL.  Given that Mimura is 20 and Nishimoto is 18, that shouldn't be a big surprise, now that the league's been gone for five years.

I found a lot of cards of Minami Takatsuka (who went just by Minami then) from the 2020 BBM Shining Venus set that I asked Ryan to pick up for me.  There were five cards in all but I already had two of them:

2020 BBM Shining Venus #04

2020 BBM Shining Venus #05

The lot also included a parallel version of card #04.  It's serially numbered to 100 and the card I got was actually #100:

The lot also included an insert card of her:

2020 BBM Shining Venus #IN1

But the big card in the lot was an autographed card of her.  Unlike the AIAIO cards above, this is an "official" authentic autograph which is /93:

I saved the best card for last.  An authentic autographed card from the 2018 Epoch JWBL set of Ayami Sato, the best female pitcher in the world (or at least she was as of a few years back):

As always, thanks to Ryan for picking all this up for me.  There'll be a bunch of posts coming soon about the rest of the stuff he sent me.

Is It Or Isn't It?

My wife's great nephew was visiting us last week and, as he surveyed my office full of Japanese baseball cards, was impressed that I had an autographed Shohei Ohtani baseball card.  He said something like "Dude, you know that's worth, like, $2000!"  I had to explain to him that it probably wasn't worth that much, since it wasn't an "authentic" autograph but something my friend Dani had gotten signed for me in Peoria, Arizona, when the Fighters were training there in 2017.  I mean, I trust that Dani actually got him to sign it but anyone I sold it to would be trusting that I was telling the truth about it and that Dani was telling the truth about it and anyone they sold it too would be....well, you get the idea.  And given recent events, it's probably getting harder to know who to trust out there.  So, no, it's unlikely that I could get $2000 for it (not that I'm looking to move it anyway).

With all that in mind, I want to talk about something I just picked up off of Ebay.  It's a card of Shigeo Nagashima (#G78) from the 2001 BBM Giants set and it looks like it might be autographed:

I'm pretty sure this isn't a "facsimile signature" parallel version from BBM as I think it would have been unlikely that they would have obscured their logo and it really looks like it was signed with Sharpie.  The question is - did Nagashima sign it?

The answer is, unfortunately, I don't know.  If he did sign it, it was before his stroke in 2004 as he lost use of his right hand and was signing with his left hand which made for a very distinctive autograph.  The seller on Ebay was selling a couple of what appeared to be signed cards, all from before 2004 so it's plausible that he got Nagashima to sign them in the early 00's.  Or he got them from someone who got them signed.  I guess I'm placing some trust in the seller.  

I didn't pay much for this card - with shipping, it was $22-ish - so it's a relatively cheap fantasy that I now have a Shigeo Nagashima autograph.  Which is probably why I've resisted asking the seller for more details.  

Latest From "When Topps Had Balls"

I reached out to Gio of the "When Topps Had Balls" blog a few weeks ago to see if he'd cooked up any new cards of NPB players using old Topps designs.  As it turned out, he had just recently printed up a set called "1980's Career Cappers" for players who finished their careers between 1979 and 1988 who didn't have "career capper" cards in the following year's Topps set.  It's a 21 card set featuring 20 MLB players like Carl Yastrzemski, Lou Brock, Willie McCovey, Wille Stargell, Johnny Bench and Reggie Jackson and one NPB player - Sadaharu Oh.  Oh retired at the end of the 1980 season so Gio has featured him on a card with the 1981 Topps design.

I didn't buy the complete set - just the Oh, Brock and McCovey cards (Brock and McCovey were two of my favorite players when I was a kid).  Gio only charged me $5 for the three cards (including shipping) and they arrived the other day.  Here's the front and back of the Oh card:

I'm drooling over a couple other cards he's done that he hasn't printed up - a 1969 Minoru Murayama, a 1964 Masaichi Kaneda and a 1976 Oh.  Hopefully, those will soon become real cards.

Thanks for the cards, Gio!