2011 Historic Edition

Now that BBM has remembered that they have a web site, they're catching up on the sets that AmiAmi and Discount Niki have been listing. Next up is the 2011 "Historic Edition" set which this year features the theme of "Hometown Heroes". If I'm reading the translation right, there is at least one OB player in the set from each of Japan's 47 prefectures and at least one active player in the set from each prefecture except Shimane (which according to Wikipedia is the second least populous prefecture in Japan).

As always, the set will contain 144 cards - 72 OB players and 72 active players. There are two insert sets - "Pride Of the Hometown" featuring OB players and "Active Stars In Japan" which is kind of self explanatory. There's also photo cards and autograph cards available and a couple parallel versions of the OB "regular" cards and the insert cards. The set will be out in late November.

Card Of The Week October 31

2005 BBM 1st Version #550

Happy Halloween!

2011 NPB Draft

The 2011 NPB Draft was held today. Both Deanna and YakyuBaka have posts up about it. The big news is that Yuki Saitoh is now a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighter (well, the Fighters own his rights anyway).

Now that there's three years worth of Tokyo Big 6 card sets as well as a couple different collegiate All Star sets, a number of the players picked today already have baseball cards. Here's the list:

Fumiya Araki, Meiji (Tigers #5)


2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #24
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #03 (shown)
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #15

Sho Araname, Toyota (BayStars #3)
2008 Upper Deck 2007 Japanese Collegiate All Stars #JN-1

Yuya Fukui, Waseda (Carp #1)


2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #07 (shown)
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #09

Masahiro Inui, Toyo (Fighters #3)


2008 BBM Japan College National Team #CN08, #CN30 (shown)

Kisho Kagami, Hosei (Baystars #2)


2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #31
2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #01
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #13 (shown)
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #25

Tatsuya Ohishi, Waseda (Lions #1)


2008 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #09 (shown)
2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #05
2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #07
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #19
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #07

Yuki Saitoh, Waseda (Fighters #1)


2008 Upper Deck 2007 Japanese Collegiate All Stars #JN-16
2008 BBM Japan College National Team #CN02, #CN24
2008 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #08
2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #06 (shown)
2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #08
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #20
2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version #08

Kota Suda, JFE Higashinihon (BayStars #1)


2008 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version #02 (shown)

2007 Japanese Collegiate All Stars

I was being a little lazy when I wrote this post the other day talking about the 2007 Japanese Collegiate All Star jersey cards that were inserted into the 2008 Upper Deck Team USA sets. I was kind of vague on where the players in the set were because I just didn't have time to look anyone up. But when Deanna left a comment raving about the players in the set, I figured I should pay a little more attention. So here's a list of the players, their college (if I could figure it out) and their current status. (I'll point out that the cards have no information about the player other than his name and position).

Name	College	Current Status
Sho Aranami	Tokai	Toyota (as of 2009)
Takeshi Hosoyamada	Waseda	Yokohama BayStars
Takahiro Iwamoto	Asia	Hiroshima Toyo Carp
Tomoyuki Kaida	Komazawa	Nihon Semei
Mikinori Kato	Keio	Tokyo Yakult Swallows
Tetsuya Kokubo	Aoyama Gakuin	Hiroshima Toyo Carp
Keijiro Matsumoto	Waseda	Yokohama BayStars
Shirou Mori	Kinki	Panasonic
Shinya Muramatsu	Kokugakuin	Did not sign up for this year's draft
Ryoji Nakata	Asia	Chunichi Dragons
Hiroki Nakazawa	Kokusai Budo	Yomiuri Giants
Tomohisa Nemoto	Yokohama Shoka	Chiba Lotte Marines
Shota Oba	Toyo	Fukuoka Softbank Hawks
Takashi Ogino	Kansai Gakuin	Chiba Lotte Marines
Shota Ohno	Toyo	Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters
Yuki Saitoh	Waseda	Will be drafted this week
Ryo Sakakibara	Kansai Kokuin	Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters
Yukinaga Tanaka	Waseda	Toyoda (as of 2009)
Shingo Tatsumi	Kinki	Fukuoka Softbank Hawks
Hiroki Uemoto	Waseda	Hanshin Tigers
Shota Waizumi	Hosei	Toshiba
Noriharu Yamazaki	Yokohama Shoka	Yokohama BayStars

The card at the top is Shota Ohno (#JN-15) and the one on the bottom is Yukinaga Tanaka (#JN-18). I got the information for this post from a number of sources, including Marinerds, Yakyu Baka and Japan Baseball Daily. You know, I think it says something about the quality of information being published in English by these sources that a non-Japanese reader like myself was able to track down information on 19 of the 22 guys in the set.

Update: I wasn't paying enough attention. This is actually the "low end" memorabilia insert for the Japanese team in the set. There are five other sets of memorabilia inserts for the set, all with limited print runs. There are three sets that feature all 22 players: autograph cards (print run of 50 apiece), jersey patch cards (print run of 20 apiece) and jersey letter cards (print run of 15 apiece). There's a card (with a limited run of 5) featuring autographs of both Pedro Alvarez and Shinya Muramatsu (team MVPs). And finally, there's a set of Japan flag patch cards with a limited press run of 1 each. For some reason, this set only has 21 cards - there's no flag patch card for Shota Ohno.

FURTHER UPDATE: I filled in the missing information based on Deanna's comments.

Card Of The Week October 24

It's been a good baseball weekend for me. Friday night, the Rangers defeated the Yankees to advance to the World Series - more importantly to me, it meant that the Yankees wouldn't be advancing to the World Series. Saturday night, the San Francisco Giants defeated the Phillies to join the Rangers in the World Series - the Giants being one of my favorite teams due to my having lived in Silicon Valley back in the 70's (and yes, I realize that one of my readers might not share my joy on this one). But more relevant for this blog is that in Nagoya on Saturday night (or morning here in Maryland), the Dragons defeated the Yomiuri Giants to advance to the Nippon Series - this being good for me because (1) the Dragons are my favorite Japanese team and (2) the Giants, being the Yankees of Japan, are my least favorite Japanese team.

Anyway, the Dragons won Saturday's game in walk-off fashion when Kazuhiro Wada hit a single that scored Ryoji Nakata from second (which if you've ever seen Ryoji Nakata then you're surprised that he could actually score from second on anything less than a double). In honor of this, I present two cards of the week this week, one for Wada and one for Nakata:



The card of Wada is from the 2001 Broccoli set (#093), back when he was a member of the Lions. Broccoli made sets for the Lions from 1999 through 2001, basically to cash in on Daisuke Matsuzaka.

The card of Nakata is a jersey card from the 2008 Upper Deck Team USA set. OK, I guess that needs a little explanation. In 2008, Upper Deck released a box set featuring the 2007 National and Junior National Teams USA. In addition to the regular cards in the set, each box contained possible autograph and memorabilia cards. One of the sets of memorabilia cards were jersey cards for the "2007 Japanese Collegiate All-Stars". There's 22 of them and the checklist contains a handful of guys (like Nakata) who've already gone on to NPB as well as the big prize in the upcoming draft, Yuki Saitoh.

About time

So BBM's website has finally been updated to include information on the Premium Malts and Rookie Edition Premium sets.

Had I known that they were just waiting for me to complain, I'd have posted something sooner...

Georgia Legend Cards

I had mentioned a while back that BBM had produced some cards to be distributed with cans of Georgia coffee, a Coca Cola Japan product. I had pretty much forgotten about these cards completely until I came across an unopened pack of "Vintage" Georgia Coffee cards. Apparently, they issued a couple "Legend" cards. I'm not positive, but I think it's possible to get either a pack with two cards (Masayuki Kakefu and Sadaharu Oh) or a pack with one card (Shigeo Nagashima). (Since their website has most of its text embedded in the graphics, Google translate can't help me out here.)

The cards are a little smaller than normal. Here are the Kakefu and Oh cards: