Torren' Up Cards

We're all aware that shipping costs have increased this year. Unfortunately that's doubly true for international shipping. I've kept international trades to a minimum this year mainly because I can't really afford to dish out $30+ for a package that would've only cost me $20 max to ship out a year ago. Also I've had the benefit of going to Japan twice this year, meaning that I could just use Japan's Postal Service to send stuff for far cheaper.

But I did undergo a trade earlier in the year and a not too long ago I "completed" my second.

I use the word "completed" in quotes because this collector (@you_oh_ on Twitter) is the only one I trade with like I do with the rest of you. Which is to say that I send them stuff at random when I just want to ship things out for the heck of it. Padded packages have gotten expensive but PWE's are still manageable (even to Japan) so I have done a stupid but cost effective thing of sending cards in PWE's across the Pacific to them a few times. They're surprised and liked the cards enough every time (I think, hopefully they didn't get damaged). That they saw fit to zap me back.


@you_oh_ saw fit to send me some serial numbered Yankees and while that's fun and all, what really stole the show were the Dragons. Keep in mind that this is the same trading partner who once set me the entire 2017 BBM Dragons team set (among others). But even more than that was the awesome Luis Torrens sketch card seen above. This marks the second such sketch of Torrens to enter my collection (after The Lost Collector's bubble mailer sketch obviously) and is probably the seventh custom Torrens card overall to enter my collection. Which is kind of insane, it just really goes to show how generous and creative card collectors who really care about their trading partners can get.


As for the official cards, the Ultra XTAL Ogasawara card above certainly kicked things off in a big way.


It's limited to 50 copies and is very worthy of being from a set called Glory. It's truly glorious.


Ooh, here's my first ever jersey/memorabilia card of a Dragon. AND OF SHINNOSUKA OGASAWARA AT THAT!

This is an undershirt so no super mojo jersey patch here but still, it's fucking dope.


This one had 300 total copies made but you know what, this one's mine now and that's all that matters.


And finally there was super cool 3D card of Mr. Three Base, Masahiko Morino.


This one is numbered to 100 copies and is probably my first ever 3D card issued by a Japanese company.

As if that wasn't fun on it's own, @you_oh_ once again sent me a complete set.


A boxed set of 2019 BBM Chunichi Dragons Brilliant.

Brilliant was one of BBM's team oriented sets that was considered to be high end (and priced as such) because they wanted to capitalize on the hype around Akira Neo and really get people to pay for the potential of pulling his autograph.


This box sent my way was used/just the set so I don't know what the autograph that accompanied these cards was, but I can tell you that this was set 0543 out of 1050 total sets. Which in turn means that even though these cards don't have serial numbers on them, they're all technically limited to 1050 copies.


While I like the snazzy-ness of these Japanese boxes, there is always something to be said about how the way BBM packages these cards is a nightmare for the corners. I'm not a stickler about condition since I'm not a grader or anything, but I do have concerns when packaging is designed specifically for stuff to fail.


Eh screw it. It might not be autographed but I did get another Neo rookie (technically numbered out of 1050 copies) out of it either way. I consider that a win for me.


All in all this was a super simple but still super fun trade. This wasn't particularly pre-planned on either my or @you_oh_'s part, and honestly I'm just fine with that. This is a lot easier than going back and forth squabbling over value. Though I do really feel like I owe them a lot now. Luckily for me I've still got the remnants of my once proud Hiroki Kuroda PC to give me some massive ammo (@you_oh_ is a Hiroshima Carp fan BTW) *grins nefariously*.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).