Ever see a guy hit a home run completely out of a domed stadium?  That's what Ernesto Mejia of the Lions did during their 12-4 shellacking of the Fighters on Friday night.  He hit a two run home run to left center that completely left the Seibu Dome.  This was only possible because Seibu Dome is open on the sides - it was a standard open air ballpark until they put a roof on it back in 1999.  Here's a link to Pacific League's video of the home run and here's Mejia's first BBM card:

2014 BBM 2nd Version #413 (1st Version Update subset)

Friday night's game had a number of interesting features.  Shogo Akiyama had the difficult three quarters of a cycle in his first four at bats - triple, home run and a double - but could not get a single in either of his last two at bats.  And Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama left Yuki Saitoh in to take a pounding in the sixth inning - Yu-chan faced 10 batters and gave up 7 hits, including home runs to Hideto Asamura and Tomoya Mori and three doubles.  He also walked a batter.  He gave up five runs and would have given up more probably had Takumi Kuriyama not gotten greedy trying to go to second on a throw to the plate after singling.  Kuriyama also let rookie starter Kohei Arihara take a bit of pounding as well - 10 hits (including the home runs by Akiyama and Mejia) and six runs (only five earned) over five innings.

I mentioned the other day in my post about JAUCE that I had picked up the "uniforms" subset from the 2015 Eagles team issued set.  I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about this subset.  The Eagles issued a team set (not sure if it's a fan club set or not - couldn't find anything about it on their website) around the beginning of April.  It's a 93 card set with 76 cards for the players, a 15 card "Memorial Uniform" subset and a two card subset that's kind of a catch-all.  The "Memorial Uniform" subset features current Eagles players wearing alternate uniforms from 2010 to 2014.  The featured uniforms are the 2010-11 "Summer" uniform, the 2011 "Eagles Rainbow" uniform, the 2012 "Eagle Star" uniform, the "Fans Uniform" from 2012, 2013 and 2014 (three separate uniforms), and the "Tohoku Green" uniforms from 2013 and 2014.

As you might expect, I picked these up to be included in my upcoming post on the history of Rakuten's uniforms so I'm just going to show a couple here:

2015 Eagles #SS1-07

Back of 2015 Eagles #SS1-07

2015 Eagles #SS1-13

The text and team logo on the front are embossed in gold which make them difficult to see in the scan.

A couple of months back I got a recommendation from reader Ryan Laughton to on another Yahoo! Japan Auctions proxy bidding outfit called JAUCE (Japan AUction CEnter).  I was browsing the auctions a few weeks back and decided to give them a shot.

JAUCE charges 800 yen + 8% for an auction win which at first looks like a better deal than kuboTEN's 1000 yen + 10%, especially when you take into account that the 8% is only taken from the winning auction price rather than the 10% from the winning auction price plus domestic shipping.  However, JAUCE charges an additional 300 yen "banking fee" when you pay the seller which kind of wipes out any savings over kuboTEN.

One significant way JAUCE can be cheaper than kuboTEN is multiple auctions.  Once you've won an auction, any auction you win in the next 24 hours is only 400 yen plus 8%, regardless of whether or not it's the same seller.  And you can keep extending this "discount period" as long as you keep winning auctions within 24 hours of the previous one.

One additional expense with JAUCE is the deposit fee - it's a flat rate of 40 yen + 4.15% of the deposit amount (JAUCE's website says 3.9% but the numbers I paid imply 4.15%).  kuboTEN's fee is simply 3.9%.

I had identified two auctions from the same seller that I wanted to buy (the 2015 BBM Eagles set and "uniforms" subset from the 2015 Eagles team issued set) and figured I'd try out JAUCE on them.  Registering for the site was relatively simple but I was a bit put off by the fact that I couldn't just enter the URL of the auction that I had already found anywhere - I actually had to use their search feature to re-find the auctions so that I could bid on them.  The bidding itself, however, was one of the best things about JAUCE - JAUCE does live bidding.  When you tell JAUCE to bid on something, you're not making a bid request that they'll get around to soon - you're actually putting a bid in on the auction right then and there.  Or if it's a "buy-it-now", you're buying it now.

Anyway, enough with the set up!  Here's what I ended up paying for everything.  The two auctions I won the two auctions were from the same seller and ended about a minute apart.  I won one for 800 yen and the other for 700 yen.  My fees for the first auction were 864 yen (800 yen plus 8% of 800 yen) and the fees for the second auction were  456 yen (400 yen plus 8% of 700 yen).  The domestic shipping for the two items was 300 yen total.  Since both items were from the same seller, I only had to pay the 300 yen "banking fee" once.  I had made an initial deposit of 2000 yen - the fees on that ran me another 123 yen on top of that (40 + 4.15% of 2000).

International shipping was 1200 yen.  I had to pay another deposit fee when I paid the balance of what I owed (everything above the initial 2000 yen) so that was another 148 yen.

So here's the summary of the charges (including the deposit fees):

Expense	Amount
Deposit Fee on 2000 yen	123
First Auction	800
Fees on First Auction	864
Second Auction	700
Fees on Second Auction	456
Domestic Shipping	300
Banking Fee	300
International Shipping	1200
Deposit fee on 2620 yen	148
Total	4891

I did not do anywhere near as detailed a comparison as I did last summer comparing kuboTEN and Shopping Mall Japan.  All I doing this time is comparing the fees I paid with JAUCE to what I would have paid with kuboTEN (making the assumption that the EMS shipping fee would be the same):

Expense	Amount
Deposit Fee on 2000 yen	78
First Auction	800
Second Auction	700
Domestic shipping	300
Fees	1280
International Shipping	1200
Deposit fee on 2280 yen	89
Total	4447

JAUCE		kuboTEN
Deposit Fee	123		78
First Auction	800		800
Second Auction	700		700
First Auction Fee	864		1110
Second Auction Fee	456		1100
Domestic Shipping	600		600
Bank Fees	600
EMS Shipping	1200		1200
Fee on 3220	173	Fee on 3510	137
Total	5516		5725

The Tigers have been one of the more stable teams in Japanese baseball history.  They were founded in 1935 as (I believe) the Osaka Tigers but changed their name during the war to Hanshin.  After the war they went back to being called the Osaka Tigers until the 1961 season, when they changed the name to the Hanshin Tigers (and adopted the interlocking "H" and "T" logo that their hats have used ever since).

Once again I am using The History Of Uniform and Professional Baseball Uniforms Encyclopedia 1936-2013 as my primary sources.  Neither source differentiates between home and away uniforms until 1953.  I am also using Yakyu Baka's Uniform posts as a reference for some of the more recent uniforms.

1936-40 3 different

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #011

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball 014

2010 BBM Tigers 75th Anniversary #10

1940-43 2 different

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #386

1944 2 different

1945-48 2 different

2005 BBM Tigers 70th Anniversary #02

1947-51 2 different

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #451

2005 BBM Tigers 70th Anniversary #16

1948-49

2010 BBM Tigers 75th Anniversary #02

1950-51

1951 JGA 11 Watanabe

1951-53 2 different

2005 BBM Tigers 70th Anniversary #12

1953-57 Home

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #422

1953-57 Away

1958-59 Home

2013 BBM Tigers Legends #94

1958-59 Away

2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 15th Anniversary #09

1960 Home

2013 BBM Tigers Legends #95

1960 Away

2015 BBM Tigers 80th Anniversary #11

1961-65 Home

1961 Marusan JCM 12d Murayama

1961-65 Away

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #T-06

1965-69 Home

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #111

1965-69 Away