2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition

My latest package from ZenMarket arrived yesterday.  It contained five sets that were released in Japan over the past two months which means I'll be doing posts about them over the next week or so.  I thought I'd kick things off with the 2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition set.

It's not very often that I pick up one of Epoch's Premier Edition team sets and I was kind of disappointed with the last one I got so I hadn't expected to be all that interested in this one.  There were a couple of things that made me change my mind though - I'll explain as I go along.

As usual, what I got was the base set.  It contains 45 cards - 36 cards for current Fighters players and 9 cards for "Legendary Players" - OB Fighters players.  The active players include pretty much everyone you'd expect, including Hiromi Itoh, Chusei Mannami, Shin Mizutani, Sachiya Yamasaki, Takayuki Katoh, Kotaro Kiyomiya and Go Matsumoto.  They also include all five of the Fighters' 2024 "rookie class" (i.e. the 2023 draftees).  Curiously there is not a card of manager Tsuyoshi Shinjyo and Ariel Martinez is the only Western player included.

The cards are pretty attractive.  I don't know if it's standard among Epoch's Premier Edition sets but these cards are on a thicker stock which have a little heft to them.  The card design is attractive and the photo selection is decent for an Epoch set.  Here's some examples (please note that my scanner cropped a little bit of the bottom of each card off):

#02

#30

#33

#24

#07

#17

One odd thing about the set was that there were seven players whose photos were studio shots before a white background.  This included four of the five 2024 rookies along with two established players - Yudai Furukawa and Yuta Kuroki.  Epoch's been doing more and more of this the past few years and I really don't understand why.

#27

You may have noticed that I said there were seven players with studio shots for photos but I only identified six of them.  The seventh was kind of interesting and one of the reasons I decided to pick up the set.  Last fall the Fighters signed a pitcher from a Taiwanese high school to their ikusei squad - this set contains the only card I've seen of him (although it would not surprise me if he was in a Fighters fan club set):

#25

The Fighters have never had a good OB team set.  The only one that BBM's ever done for them was the 2013 Fighters 10th Season With Hokkaido set which, as its name implies, only covers the team since it moved to Hokkaido in 2004.  So the fact that this set included OB Fighters players from before the move made it a little more attractive to me.  Especially since they weren't just random players included because they were around to sign autographs - there's some pretty big names here (although not Yu Darvish or Shohei Ohtani).  The nine players are Yutaka Enatsu, Atsunori Inaba, Tsutomu Iwamoto, Junichi Kashiwabara, Isamu Kida, Yukihiro Nishizaki, Michihiro Ogasawara, Kensuke Tanaka and Yukio Tanaka.  Enatsu was kind of the big attraction here for me - he's pretty much only been in the ultra-high end Epoch sets over the past eight or nine years.  The photos of the three oldest players - Kashiwabara, Enatsu and Kida - are kind of odd as the player is in color but the background is in black and white.  Here's a couple of the OB cards:

#39

#43

#45

While several of the OB players were with the Fighters once they moved up north, only Inaba and Kensuke Tanaka are depicted as Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.  The other seven are all shown with the Tokyo-based version of the team.

As always, you can check out all the cards over at Jambalaya.

Card Shops In Japan: Kinkys

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

While I've been working on posts about the card shops I visited on my trip to Japan in May, I've realized that most of the new posts are for shops that I really didn't like very much (Mint Shinjuku, Mint Tachikawa) while I'm only updating existing posts for stores that I really liked (Quad Sports, Mint Ikebukuro, etc).  I've been doing the new posts in the order that I visited the shops and next on the list was one of my least favorite stores.  I decided to switch things up a little and instead write about a shop that I really enjoyed instead - Kinkys in Osaka.

With a name like "Kinkys", you might get the wrong idea when I describe it as an antique toy store.  Let me be clear, they don't sell THOSE kind of toys.  What they do sell are vintage toys from the 1950's and later, kids magazines, record albums and 45s and lots of trading cards, especially baseball cards.  They stock a lot of Calbee cards and I also saw Yamakatsu and menko cards there.  Sean had discovered this store on line (although I don't think he's made it there in person yet) and Ryan has been here several times.

I visited the store the afternoon of the day I had arrived in Osaka.  The store is located about a quarter mile from Neyagawashi Station on the Keihan Main Line.  It takes around a half hour to get there from Umeda Station and about 40 minutes from Dotonbori.  It's on the second floor of a small building with an udon restaurant on the ground floor:

You get to the shop by going into the doorway on the right and climbing the stairs.  The stairwell is decorated with picture sleeves from vintage 45s - I was amused that there were a number of singles from the Kinks:

The store is packed with stuff - enough that it can be a little difficult to maneuver.  I took a bunch of photos although I don't know if they really capture the store well (the store's website does a better job of it):

There was a big pile of Calbee albums for various sets (not just baseball):

While I found Calbee cards in several different locations in the store, the most valuable ones (either due to rarity or being in really good condition) were in binders up near the cash register:

While the Calbees in the rest of the store are basically in random groups, the cards in the binders are organized in order so it's easy to find a particular card you're looking for.

I ended up buying a handful of Calbee cards here.  I saw the Yamakatsu and menko cards but I didn't really look into them too much since there weren't any specific cards of those that I was looking for.  Here's what I bought:

I also bought a 45 of the Young Rascals "People Got To Be Free" for a friend of mine who's a huge record collector.  I knew he liked the Young Rascals (we went to see them in Baltimore way back when) and I (correctly) figured he'd get a kick out of it:

I spent 4000 yen here which wasn't too bad considering the Lions multi-player card was 2000 yen and the 45 was 1280.  My total was actually 4120 yen but the shopkeeper (who I assume is the owner) rounded it down to 4000 yen since he didn't take credit cards.  I had enough cash with me to pay the full price but he insisted on the lower price. 

I didn't talk to him much as he was on the phone for a bit when I arrived at the store but the owner seemed friendly.  He did insist that I leave my shoulder bag and the shopping bag from the Godzilla store I had visited earlier that day on a shelf while I was in the store (you can see them in one of the photos I took in the shop).  With so much stuff I'm sure he's worried about shoplifting.  Customers wearing backpacks are likely to knock stuff over as well.

If I haven't been clear, I'd go back here in a heartbeat despite it being a little out of the way.  It was a very fun store.

Here's a map with the store's location:

Card Of The Week August 18

I'm a little late on this but last Sunday Haruto Takahashi started for the Tigers against the Carp.  He threw five shutout innings, striking out seven while only giving four hit and two walks.  He got the win in the Tigers' 4-0 victory.

This is significant because it was Takahashi's first start with the top team in almost three years - 1025 days to be exact.  He'd missed the entire 2022 season after having Tommy John surgery and missed all of last year due to shoulder injuries.  He was demoted to the team's ikusei squad after last year but pitched pretty well on the farm team this season (I saw him pitch against Hayate in Shizuoka back in May).  He was re-signed to Hanshin's 70 man roster last month.

This wasn't the first time Takahashi had a significant gap in his playing time.  He's pretty much struggled with injuries ever since being the Tigers' second round draft pick in 2017.  He was shut down due to shoulder injuries in June of 2018 and didn't pitch again until the following season.  He missed time in 2019, 2020 and 2021 with various injuries before needing TJ surgery.

I was at the game in Koshien when he beat the Giants on May 30th of 2019 for his first win with the top team in 377 days which was commemorated with an Epoch One card:

#251

Cracking The Code

2021 JABA Player Cards # 21JP082

I mentioned in my post last week about the 2024 JABA Player Cards that it looked like there was a directly relationship between the set's checklist and the players listed in the "Prospect Player List" pdf that's available on the webpage that's referenced by a QR code on the wrapper.  I've done some further investigation (mostly by checking items for sale on Mecari) and I've confirmed that the players in that pdf are the players in the checklist and they appear in the checklist in the same order that they appear in the list.  I've generated a full checklist for the set.

What I realized then was that the previous JABA sets that I had opened packs for - 2021 and 2022 - had also had QR codes that referenced this same page.  However, there were different "Prospect Player List" pdfs for those years which was no longer available on the website.  They were, however, findable via the Wayback Machine and I was able to use them (along with the cards I had and the ones for sale on Mercari) to generate checklists for both of those sets as well.  Here's all three checklists:

2022 JABA Player Card #22JP014

There are 92 cards in the 2021 set, 88 in the 2022 set and 90 in the 2024 set (although as I mentioned in my post about the set, there's only 45 players in the 2024 set - each player has a "normal" and a "foil" card).  There's quite a bit of overlap between the 2021 and 2022 sets as they have 84 players in common.  A number of those players also appear in the 2024 set although I didn't actually do the research to figure out how many there or who they were.

I'm very confident that the 2021 and 2024 checklists are complete and accurate and only a little less confident of the 2022 one.  The version of the "Prospect Player List" that corresponded to the 2022 set lists a player (Shinjiro Ishii) that I'm 99.9% sure does not actually appear in the set.  I verified the card numbers of some 57 of the 88 cards in the set and removing him from the list is the only way to reconcile the pdf with the cards I saw.

The 2021 set includes nine players who have since been drafted by NPB teams - Ryosuke Ohtsu (2022 Hawks 2nd), Kei Kawano (2022 Carp 5th), Atsuya Kogita (2021 Buffaloes 7th), Atsuya Hirohata (2021 Marines 3rd), Hiromasa Funabasa (2022 Giants 5th), Ryuya Matsumoto (2021 Carp 5th), Shunya Morita (2023 Giants 2nd), Hiroki Fukunaga (2022 Dragons 7th) and Shota Suekane (2021 Carp 6th).  Suekane is probably the biggest name here which is why his card's for sale on Mercari for 5200 yen.  The 2022 set only has six draftees with Ryuji Komago (2022 Eagles 2nd) joining the Ohtsu, Kawano, Funabasa, Morita and Fukunaga.  Obviously no one from the 2024 set has been drafted yet but that'll probably change in three months.

All three sets include cards of Ryouske Aizawa and Motoki Mukoyama who appeared in the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Japanese Collegiate All Stars memorabilia cards.  The 2024 set does not include any of the players from the 2024 version of the Panini set who are now playing in the corporate leagues.

I know that there was a 2023 set but I've only seen one card from it so they're apparently on the rare side.  I went to a corporate league game when I was in Japan - it was part of the Tokyo qualifier for the Intercity Tournament.  There were no cards for sale but there was some sheets of cards on the table where I bought my ticket for the game.  I asked about them and were told they weren't for sale but they did let me take a picture of them:

I don't know what these are as they don't look like the one 2023 card that I've seen (which appears to have a similar design to the 2024 cards).

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Sendai (UPDATED)

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

After attending an afternoon Eagles game at Miyagi Baseball Stadium on my day trip to Sendai, I headed for Mint Sendai.   This was my second visit to this store but my first since they moved to their new location.  They had previously been in the E BeanS shopping mall on the west side of Sendai Station but have since moved to the Parco Shopping Mall that's MUCH closer to the station - you pretty much walk outside the station and the Mall is right there.

The store is located on the eighth floor of the mall and I felt like I was going back in time when I stepped out of the elevator on that floor - I had to walk through a Tower Records to get to the card shop!  It took me back to the 1980's when I used to regularly haunt the store near the Foggy Bottom Metro Stop in DC.  

I didn't spend any time browsing in the record store, though. as my thoughts were firmly on baseball cards.  Here's a couple photos of the shop:

(I want to point out that I don't think the photo on the store's page at the Mall's website is actually of the store.  It looks more like Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi in Osaka - in fact you can see a cropped version of the same photo on the Osaka store's site.) 

The thing that really struck me about this store is that besides the hits, I didn't feel like they had many baseball cards at all.  They appeared to have a lot of non-sports cards but there were several boxes of random baseball cards beneath one of the counters.  The boxes I looked through had a lot of Calbee cards from the last ten years or so but they also contained random things like mid-70's Calbee cards and Hideki Matsui Home Run cards from the 1990's.  The big thing I was expecting to find here were team issued cards for the Eagles.  They had a lot of those and I think they also had singles from BBM's Eagles team sets although I may be misremembering.

When I came up with my new categories for Japanese card shops last month, I categorized this store as a "Mall Shop for building recent sets".  I'm not sure that's really accurate since I don't remember seeing singles for anything other than Eagles cards and random Calbees although I certainly could have missed them.  I'm not sure I'd categorize them as "Mall Shop with only hits" either though as they were a little more interesting to me than that.  Maybe the best way to think of them is somewhere in between those two categories - they have the recent unopened stuff and the hits but they also have some random other things.  It's definitely not a store you should expect to do any set building at (unless you're trying to finish an Eagles team issued set) but it's worth a visit if you've got a half hour or so to kill in Sendai.

Here's a map with the store's location:

Card Of The Week August 11

The 106th National High School Baseball Championship (aka 2024 Summer Koshien) kicked off this past week and I thought it'd be a good time to show off this 1977 Calbee card of Sadaharu Oh that I got recently:

1977 Calbee #85

It's from the "Path To Stardom" series (Series 3 in the 1977 "Grey Back" set) and shows Oh marching with his Waseda Jitsugyo teammates at the 1957 Spring Koshien tournament.  Waseda won that tournament with Oh pitching a complete game victory over Kochi Commercial High School.  I initially thought this was from the Opening procession for the tournament but if I'm understanding the Google translation of the back of the card, it's actually from the celebration after they won.  Here's the back of the card:

That's next to impossible to read so here's a version where I really turned up the contrast:

Besides making the text more readable, it really enhanced the crease running through the cards.

Waseda Jitsugyo is in this year's tournament and defeated Naruto Uzushio in their first game yesterday. 

2024 JABA Player Cards

The 2024 Intercity Baseball Tournament, which is one of two major tournaments for corporate league baseball in Japan, was held a couple of weeks ago.  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries East was the winner.  My friend Deanna was still in Japan while it was going on and she attended some games.  She discovered that they were selling packs of the 2024 JABA Player cards at the games and she picked up a few packs for me.  She and her boyfriend Noel subsequently returned to the States and made an East Coast swing recently that brought them into the mid-Atlantic area.  The two of them stopped by my hometown in Maryland this past week to meet up with me for lunch and she passed the cards along to me.

She had four packs total for me although one of them is going to Ryan.  Each pack contains five cards and retailed for 660 yen.  The packs for the 2021 and 2022 sets were available on the online store at JABA's (Japan Amateur Baseball Association) website but the store doesn't appear to be there anymore.  I would say that the cards are only available at JABA events but I went to a corporate league game while I was in Japan back in May and they didn't have any cards for sale.

It's been a little frustrating trying to find information about these sets.  I've never seen a checklist for any of the sets and the cards are pretty rare on the on-line stores that it's difficult to generate one.  There's a QR code on the back of the wrapper that I hoped would lead to something useful but the link takes you to a webpage with a "Prospect Player List" which is not a checklist.  However, I believe that it IS the list of players in the set AND I think the order they appear in the list corresponds to the order the players appear in the checklist.

The thing that's a little odd about this iteration of the set is that while I believe the set has 90 cards total, it only has cards for 45 players.  Each player has two cards in the set with the higher numbered cards (46-90) having a "foil" finish.  The foil cards aren't parallels of the non-foil cards and aren't necessarily more rare - of the three packs I opened, I got eight "foil" cards and seven non-foil cards (one of which was a double).  This was not how the 2021 and 2022 sets looked - as far as I've seen, there's only one card per player in those sets.  I don't know about the 2023 set since I don't have any of those cards.

Here's the 14 cards I got from the three packs I opened (I got doubles on the Fujimura card):

You'll notice that I have two cards of Kazuki Kondoh and their numbers are 45 cards apart (the non-foil card number is 24JP016 while the foil card's is 24JP061).  This is what made me assume that there were 90 cards total but only 45 players in the set.  If you compare the card numbers to the order that the player's appear in the "Prospect Player List", you'll see that they match up.  For example, the card I have of Kishi Iwamoto is numbered 24JP048.  If we "normalize" it (which basically means subtract 45 from it so we have a number between 1 and 45) we get 3.  In the "Prospect Player List", Iwamoto is the third player listed.  Similarly, Fujimura is the eighth player listed and Akiyama is the eleventh which correspond to their card numbers.  

I don't know anything about these particular players although I find it interesting that Keisho Amiya of Yamaha was an ikusei player for the Baystars for three years (2016-18) and I have a handful of cards of him with DeNA:

There's no real difference in the backs of the non-foil or foil cards other than the color - the non-foil cards are blue while the foil ones are grey.  Here's the backs of both Kondoh cards so that you can see that they're identical except for the color:

Like I've said about the previous sets, I'd love to get more of these cards but the few ones I see on Mercari are pricier than I'd like.  But thanks for picking these up for me, Deanna!