Marinerds, etc.

I guess I'm kinda sniping NPB Card Guy here, but I got this set 2 weeks ago, right before Opening Day.

I have to admit that I'm overjoyed this set exists at all, as people were really iffy on whether Tokyo Big 6 merchandise would exist at all after Yuki Saitoh graduated, and several players even told me last winter that they were fairly sure there wouldn't be anything this year. Bizarrely, however, that is not the case at all, and you can get a whole variety of goods at Jingu and from Mizuno's shop. (It's even spaced out around Jingu almost like a treasure hunt -- one stall sells towels, another sells t-shirts, another sells cellphone straps... and there's no overlap, so you have to look around.) The only thing that seems to have actually been discontinued is Nikkan Sports's college version of the "ai" magazine series, College Base Heroes. Which is a SHAME, because it was AWESOME.

Anyway, this is the first Tokyo Big 6 set in three years to not have Yuki Saitoh in it at all. Hooray? (Thanks to my sniped card friend for the correction.)

What they seem to be making a big deal of in this set is "Get Nomura and Itoh's cards before they get drafted... and by the way we've put in insert cards of a whole bunch of NPB stars when they were in Tokyo Big 6!" Even BBM's official page only seems to show the alumni insert cards.

As before, I'd still be happier if they did 9 players per team instead of 5 per team and insert cards, but I guess that's what they think sells. (I kind of felt in the past that they did this because they don't want to waste 9 cards on Todai's team, though they could have easily added Katori, Utsumi, and maybe Hiraizumi and Yamakoshi to this set to make 9, and then other teams would get some more players that really deserve cards, like Hosei and Meiji's captains Nanba and Takeda, for a start, as well as guys like Meiji's Shimauchi and Uemoto, Rikkio's Naga and other Hayato Saitoh, and much as I hate to admit it, Waseda's Matsumoto.)

Card list (the number is the card number in the set, plus school year and position, and * denotes team captain)

Waseda:
1. Kensuke Ohno (4, P)
2. Daisuke Ichimaru (4, C)
3. Yuya Watanabe (4, IF)
4. Shota Sugiyama (3, IF)
5. *Shohei Habu (4, OF)
6. Waseda Team

Keio:
7. Daisuke Takeuchi (3, P)
8. Koji Fukutani (3, P)
9. *Hayata Itoh (4, OF)
10. Ren Yamasaki (3, IF)
11. Ryuta Iba (4, C)
12. Keio Team

Hosei:
13. Tomoya Mikami (4, P)
14. Kazuki Mishima (3, P)
15. Yusuke Hasegawa (4, IF)
16. Hiroshi Taki (3, IF)
17. Kanji Kawai (2, IF)
18. Hosei Team

Meiji:
19. Yusuke Nomura (4, P)
20. Kenji Kawabe (4, C)
21. Toshiki Abe (4, IF)
22. Yosuke Kobayashi (4, IF)
23. Masataka Nakamura (4, OF)
24. Meiji Team

Rikkio:
25. Hayato Saitoh (4, P)
26. Kenya Okabe (3, P)
27. Masato Komuro (3, P)
28. *Keisuke Okazaki (4, IF)
29. Koichiro Matsumoto (3, IF)
30. Rikkio Team

Tokyo:
31. Shota Suzuki (2, P)
32. Atsushi Tanaka (4, C)
33. *Shuhei Iwasaki (4, IF)
34. Yohei Tachi (3, IF)
35. Hisanari Takayama (4, OF)
36. Todai Team

Insert Cards:
(It seems that you get them paired by university. I got 2 Waseda cards. Dave got 2 Keio cards. Another friend of mine got the 2 Rikkio cards.)

"Heroes" (current student cards)
SP01: Shohei Habu (W)
SP02: Hayata Itoh (K)
SP03: Kazuki Mishima (H)
SP04: Yusuke Nomura (M)
SP05: Keisuke Okazaki (R)
SP06: Shuhei Iwasaki (T)

"Legends" (NPB alumni cards, so I'll list where they're from and where they are)
SP07: Tsuyoshi Wada (W) (Hawks)
SP08: Yoshinobu Takahashi (K) (Giants)
SP09: Atsunori Inaba (H) (Fighters)
SP10: Kenshin Kawakami (M) (MLB Braves AA)
SP11: Daisuke Hayakawa (R) (Baystars)
SP12: Takahiro Matsuka (T) (Fighters)


And here's a few photos of my set:


Front of the box. The pictures are a very weird combination of alumni and current players; 3 cards on the left are alumni but 3 on the right are current, and the 6 guys pictured are Wada, Yoshinobu, Inaba, Nomura, Okazaki, and Iwasaki.


Inside the box -- this is from the November 3rd playoff game, where Waseda and Keio were tied for the final record after Keio won Soukeisen and forced a playoff game for the first time in 50 years.


These are the insert cards in my box, the Waseda set of Wada and Habu.


I picked out my favorite card from each team: Rikkio's Saitoh, Keio's Fukutani, Waseda's Ichimaru, Hosei's Kawai, Meiji's Kawabe, and Todai's Iwasaki.

There are others I like -- actually I like all of the Keio cards and the Rikkio ones aren't bad either. They did a pretty good job with the photography in this set, IMO.

I hope it sells well enough that they still make an autumn set and continue to make these in general. It's funny, I stopped collecting NPB cards in general after the 2008 season except for an occasional box set here and there and of course the Fighters team sets, but I've always gotten the Big 6 cards because they're special to me, almost like having a beloved favorite set of minor-leaguer cards, really.

is out in stores now, and the bags of chips just appeared in my local grocery store sometime in the last week, so I bought four of them when I was grocery shopping tonight. It's crazy that Series 3 is already out; I barely got any Series 2 cards. Although that is mostly because I was gone or travelling for such a long time this summer, and then decided to cut down on junk food when I returned from the US. But I'll probably make an exception for some chips every now and then... it's still nowhere near as bad as when I was collecting Lotte Bikkuriman chocolate wafer baseball stickers.

Calbee Baseball Cards Page, you can also see the set lists if you can read Japanese.



Here are my pulls. I got the Tigers' Sakurai and Shunsuke Fujikawa, the Lions' Fujita, Yakult's Aikawa, the obvious Marines' Shunsuke Watanabe, Rakuten's Teppei, and Orix's So Taguchi. I suppose the Taguchi card is probably the most interesting?

The 8th card is a checklist that appears to be of Lotte's Yuji Yoshimi.

I didn't get any "special" cards, so I can't really comment on what's new and neat in this series, unfortunately.

I am mostly writing this post to apologize for not actually finishing any of the posts from stuff this weekend yet. I watched college ball at Jingu, and indie ball in Nagano, and also minor-league ball at Kamagaya, and all of them were unique and wonderful experiences in their own way.

Okay, now that I am no longer sniping NPB Card Guy, I can finish this post :)

I'm probably one of the biggest dorks about Tokyo Big 6 baseball; I've been going to games since I moved here in 2007, and have been at enough of them in the last two years that I've been promoted from "oh, a gaijin" to "oh, THAT gaijin" among the Jingu regulars and even some of the players.

The "Handkerchief Generation" has spurred a lot of Tokyo Big 6 merchandising, including DVDs and calendars, and since spring 2008, a special card set box for each semester. I realize BBM would probably love nothing more than to make a "Yuki Saitoh" box instead of a "Tokyo Big 6" box. Too bad. This set is required to represent all 6 teams in the Tokyo Big 6 league equally, even if Tokyo University has only won 2 games (and lost 50) since the inception of the set.

You can see a few card samples on the official BBM page -- pictured there are the cards for Daisuke Takeuchi (K), Yuki Saitoh (W), Yusuke Nomura (M), Soichiro Tanaka (R), Kisho Kagami (H), and Shuhei Iwasaki (T).

For the record, their advertising at the top mentions that OMG YOU CAN GET YUKI SAITOH'S LAST COLLEGE CARD, and also says how Saitoh, Ohishi, and Fukui are expected to go as high draft picks (gee no mention of any non-Waseda candidates). And hey, you can also get the first ever card for Keio's Daisuke Takeuchi, who threw a no-hitter against Tokyo! And whee there are insert cards! Oh boy!

No offense, BBM, but I'd be happier if you went back to 9 players per team instead of 5, rather than putting in insert cards. Even if it means you may have to feature some Todai guys who batted .050 or have a 15.00 ERA.

Card list (the number is the card number in the set, plus school year and position, and * denotes team captain)

Keio:
1. Daisuke Takeuchi (2, P)
2. Koji Fukutani (2, P)
3. Masahiro Nagasaki (4, C)
4. *Tatsushi Yumoto (4, IF)
5. Hayata Itoh (3, OF)
6. Keio Team

Waseda:
7. Tatsuya Ohishi (4, P)
8. *Yuki Saitoh (4, P)
9. Yuya Fukui (4, P)
10. Yuya Watanabe (3, IF)
11. Shohei Habu (3, OF)
12. Waseda Team

Meiji:
13. Kazuki Nishijima (4, P)
14. Yusuke Nomura (3, P)
15. Fumiya Araki (4, IF/OF)
16. Kento Yajima (4, OF)
17. Masataka Nakamura (3, OF)
18. Meiji Team

Rikkio
19. Kenya Okabe (2, P)
20. Keisuke Okazaki (3, IF)
21. Koichiro Matsumoto (2, IF)
22. *Soichiro Tanaka (4, OF)
23. Hayato Saitoh (2, OF)
24. Rikkio Team

(There are two boys named Hayato Saitoh on the Rikkio team; this one is 西藤勇人, not 斎藤隼)

Hosei
25. Kisho Kagami (4, P)
26. Kazuki Mishima (2, P)
27. Yoh Sasaki (4, IF)
28. Hiroshi Taki (2, IF)
29. Kanji Kawai (1, IF)
30. Hosei Team

Tokyo
31. *Yoshihiro Maeda (4, P)
32. Junichi Katori (2, P)
33. Shuhei Iwasaki (3, IF)
34. Shota Utsumi (3, IF)
35. Yohei Tachi (2, IF)
36. Tokyo Team

Insert Cards (These are basically the Best 9, plus Kazuki Mishima for being ERA title holder. Yuya Watanabe was batting champion but he was also on the Best 9. I have already argued quite extensively on why Daisuke Takeuchi was clearly deserving of being the Best 9 pitcher.)

Insert cards:
SP01: Daisuke Takeuchi (K)
SP02: Masahiro Nagasaki (K)
SP03: Yoh Sasaki (H)
SP04: Yuya Watanabe (W)
SP05: Takayuki Matsuo (K)
SP06: Koichiro Matsumoto (R)
SP07: Hayata Itoh (K)
SP08: Soichiro Tanaka (R)
SP09: Kento Yajima (M)
SP10: Kazuki Mishima (H)

And I offer a few photos:


Box, front.


Box, back.


Box, inside, and Daisuke Takeuchi card on the top of the stack since it's #1. You may notice Hitoshi Fuchigami standing behind him in the card, which is funny because Fuchigami doesn't have his own card in this set, but he said "See, I'm still in the set... kinda..."


My favorite card of the set is probably freshman Kanji Kawai's, and not just because Kawai is my favorite rookie. I was at that game where that shot was taken, and have a shot of the same AB, I think, only from the other side.

My insert card is Koichiro Matsumoto. I wouldn't mind trading it...

I'm debating the idea of trying to get all of my cards signed except Waseda (since those guys might as well have a barbed-wire fence around them), but I'm not sure if it's worth bothering so many guys. I guess I have 6 weeks to get up the nerve to do it :)

Is in stores now. I was just at the grocery to pick up ordinary things like bread and orange juice and ended up coming home with 4 bags of potato chips. Damn you, Calbee!

I have a lot more cards than I really care to admit, given how many potato chips you need to eat to get them. And of course now I'm like "Argh! Must find remaining bags of Series 1 chips so I can try to get some more of those cards!"

Anyway, I figured I'd post the bags and a few of the cards just for fun.


Series 1 and Series 2 bags side by side.


The cards are actually attached to the back of the bags in separate little packs -- someone once asked me if the cards were inside the bags or not. See, this is Japan, so they don't seem to have problems with people stealing the card packs off the bags, at least not as far as I know. Crazy, huh?


Some cards I got from Series 1 and Series 2. My best 3 Series 1 cards are probably my parallel signed Top Player cards of Shohei Tateyama and Chihiro Kaneko, and then the fact that I have two Yusei Kikuchi cards. I guess my best 2 cards so far in Series 2 is that I got a Darvish, and also a Star card for Tomotaka Sakaguchi.

I am possibly sniping the NPB Card Guy on this one, but while I'm still basking in the glow of the Tokyo Big 6 spring semester season starting (possibly my last one -- sigh), I went and bought a bunch of stuff. Got the new official Big 6 t-shirt and towel they're selling, and the usual college ball magazines (Shube's special, and College Base Heroes), and naturally, now that it's out, I also got the Tokyo Big 6 Spring 2010 Card Set.

You can see samples of the normal cards on their official site page -- if you're curious, the six they have shown are Yusuke Nomura (M), Tatsushi Yumoto (K), Kisho Kagami (H), Yuki Saitoh (W), Keisuke Okazaki (R), and Yoshihiro Maeda (T).

For whatever reason, there are only 5 players per team plus a team card rather than 9 as there have been the past two Spring Season sets, yet this set ALSO costs 2500 yen. Not really sure what's up with that either.

Player lists (plus school year and position, and * denotes captain)

Meiji:
Kazuki Nishijima (4, P)
Yusuke Nomura (3, P)
Fumiya Araki (4, IF/OF)
Shogo Shashiki (4, IF)
Masashi Yamaguchi (4, IF)

Hosei:
Kisho Kagami (4, P)
Kazuki Mishima (2, P)
Takuya Hiromoto (4, C)
Yoh Sasaki (4, IF)
Hiroshi Taki (2, IF)

Rikkio
Masahito Nihira (4, P)
Hayato Saitoh (3, P)
Masatoshi Itoh (4, IF)
Keisuke Okazaki (3, IF)
*Soichiro Tanaka (4, OF)

Keio
Masahiro Nagasaki (4, C)
Hitoshi Fuchikami (4, IF)
*Tatsushi Yumoto (4, IF)
Naoki Yamaguchi (4, OF)
Hayata Itoh (3, OF)

Waseda
Tatsuya Ohishi (4, P)
*Yuki Saitoh (4, P)
Koji Udaka (4, IF)
Hiroki Matsunaga (4, IF)
Shohei Habu (3, OF)

Tokyo
*Yoshihiro Maeda (4, P)
Gosuke Hiraizumi (3, P)
Atsushi Tanaka (3, C)
Shuhei Iwasaki (3, IF)
Takashi Kihara (4, OF)

Special Insert "Big Heroes" Cards (there's 1 in each box):
Nomura (M)
Araki (M)
Yumoto (K)
Itoh (K)
Kagami (H)
Taki (H)
Ohishi (W)
Saitoh (W)
Okazaki (R)
Tanaka (R)
Maeda (T)
Iwasaki (T)


I got a Hayata Itoh insert card with my set. If anyone reading this also buys the set and happens to get a Kagami or Ohishi (or Taki), I will gladly trade you for that and throw in something else to make it worthwhile for you... I even went to a card store to see if they had some opened boxes but apparently they don't bother doing that much anymore, even with the prospect of getting a special Yuki Saitoh card.

I don't have a scanner to show you any more of the cards per se, but I can show you the box, which is lovely as always. They always have some beautiful Jingu shots on the inside:





(Also pictured is my Itoh insert card above the closed box, and the front of Tatsuya Ohishi's regular card and the back of Kazuki Nishijima's with the open box.)

Something I find vaguely amusing is that only 4 of the 6 teams have a card for their team captain (Hosei's captain is infielder Seiya Ohyagi and Meiji's captain is Yuki Yamauchi).

...a Rami-chan and Yusei Kikuchi?





(In short: Calbee Pro Yakyu Chips are potato chips that come with 2 baseball cards per bag. The chips aren't that great, but the cards have been around for years, longer than BBM, even. I've collected them the last few years, but not actively so much as just "I'm in the convenience store, I want a snack, hey, it's baseball card chip season, might as well.")

I bought a bag of chips on my way back from the Dragons-Fighters game at Kamagaya today, and this is what I got.

Bizarrely, I may be one of the few people in the country not all that excited about this pull. On the other hand, I know that Kikuchi's BBM "Rookie Edition" card is already going for 1000 yen at the card shops, because I went to get this year's Fighters RE set and couldn't help but take a look around.

I also seem to be unable to refer to him as "Yusei".

(I still think the most bizarre thing I saw there was the Ayumi Kataoka card boxed set, which looked to be one-third baseball cards of her with the Ibaraki Golden Golds, and two-thirds cards of her looking almost like a fashion model. I can't find an official site for the cards, but here's a variety of them on Rakuten's auction site; you get the idea.)

Anyway, I think I'll shove that Kikuchi card into a card holder and forget about it for a while...

So many things to write about, so few functioning braincells recently.

I got home from work tonight around midnight and opened a Bikkuriman Pro Yakyu 2008 wafer, as I do every few days now. I'd stopped eating them regularly a few weeks ago, but was still holding out hopes that I'd get a G.G. Satoh sticker so I wouldn't have to go wandering through the dark alleys of hobby shops, looking for memorabilia peddlers with their shiny cartoonish stickers, saying, "hey, man, I'll give you anything for a GG. I'll give you 6 Kazumi Saitohs. I'll give you a Darvish. I'll give you whatever you want, just please make this suffering end!"

And well, finally, my suffering ended, at 12:30am, October 8, 2008. 出た。



By the way, the G.G. Satoh sticker is EASILY the lamest and ugliest one of the entire set, IMO. It doesn't even really look like him. I'm pretty disappointed in general; it feels like an anticlimactic ending after I spent 2 months having every sticker EXCEPT him. The set is overall pretty fantastic, which is why I got so caught up in collecting them a few months ago.

Here's my final tally. If anyone out there is collecting, and needs any of the ones I have insane amounts of doubles of, let me know. I'm pretty open to trades; heck, I ended up giving away a whole bunch of them in the first place.

Giants: Hisanori Takahashi x4, Yoshinobu Takahashi x4, *Shinnosuke Abe x3
Dragons: Kenshin Kawakami x3, Motonobu Tanishige x5, *Hitoki Iwase
Tigers: Keiji Uezono x4, Makoto Imaoka x5, *Kyuji Fujikawa x3
Baystars: Hayato Terahara, Toshihisa Nishi x4, *Shuichi Murata x3
Carp: Kan Ohtake x3, Kenta Kurihara x7, *Katsuhiro Nagakawa x3
Swallows: Hirotoshi Ishii x4, Shinya Miyamoto x3, *Norichika Aoki x3

Fighters: Yu Darvish x2, Atsunori Inaba x3, *Hichori Morimoto x3
Marines: Yoshihisa Naruse x3, Tsuyoshi Nishioka x3, *Tomoya Satozaki x4
Hawks: Takahiro Mahara x5, Hiroki Kokubo x4, *Kazumi Saitoh x7
Eagles: Masahiro Tanaka x3, Yosuke Takasu x4, *Takeshi Yamasaki x2
Lions: Fumiya Nishiguchi x2, G.G. Satoh, *Hiroyuki Nakajima x6
Buffaloes: Daisuke Katoh x3, Tuffy Rhodes x4, *Kazuhiro Kiyohara x4

Maybe I can have a contest, like "write a poem or song about your favorite team or player and I'll send you the team set". That would be pretty funny.

* until Bikkuriman 2009. Plus I still have 8 unopened ones from this year's set left to open and eat. I swear if I get a second GG Satoh I'm going to punch someone, probably Satoh himself.

In the last month or so, since the Jingu Bleacher Bum made a post about them on japanesebaseball.com, I have been collecting the Lotte Bikkuriman 2008 pro yakyu stickers. (Strangely, I don't have either of this year's new Lotte ones yet, though.)

Bikkuriman Chocolates are these wafer cookies with chocolate in the middle. They cost about 80 yen, and in the case of Bikkuriman Pro Yakyu, each one comes with one sticker. The stickers are REALLY cute caricatures of the players. I believe they started in 2006; each year now they make two players per team and a third "gold sticker" of a former design.

I'm going to try to keep this post updated fairly frequently with my current have-list and want-list. So here it is (updated as of August 8th).

(Edit Aug 8: I went to Ikebukuro's Mint store, they have some of these and are willing to trade either 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 depending on the player. So I traded two Nishiguchis and a Murata for a Darvish. They didn't have GG Satoh though.)

Deanna's Bikkuriman 2008 Want/Have/Trade List

Players I have a sticker of, but only one, are in black.
Players I have doubles of are in blue.
Players I want are in red. ALL I NEED IS GG SATOH! ARGH!

Giants: Hisanori Takahashi x4, Yoshinobu Takahashi, *Shinnosuke Abe x2
Dragons: Kenshin Kawakami x2, Motonobu Tanishige x4, *Hitoki Iwase
Tigers: Keiji Uezono x2, Makoto Imaoka x5, *Kyuji Fujikawa
Baystars: Hayato Terahara x3, Toshihisa Nishi x2, *Shuichi Murata x3
Carp: Kan Ohtake x2, Kenta Kurihara x5, *Katsuhiro Nagakawa x2
Swallows: Hirotoshi Ishii x3, Shinya Miyamoto, *Norichika Aoki x2

Fighters: Yu Darvish, Atsunori Inaba, *Hichori Morimoto x4
Marines: Yoshihisa Naruse, Tsuyoshi Nishioka x2, *Tomoya Satozaki x3
Hawks: Takahiro Mahara x2, Hiroki Kokubo, *Kazumi Saitoh x8
Eagles: Masahiro Tanaka x2, Yosuke Takasu x2, *Takeshi Yamasaki
Lions: Fumiya Nishiguchi x2, G.G. Satoh, *Hiroyuki Nakajima x5
Buffaloes: Tuffy Rhodes x3, Daisuke Katoh x2, *Kazuhiro Kiyohara x2

Last night when grocery shopping, I bought a few more of them (I still will only eat one per day though -- it's my new snack/junkfood bad habit, I suppose, replacing Calbee Pro Yakyu Potato Chips), and managed to take the last ones out of a box, so I asked the cashier if I could also take the empty box, since it had the artwork of all the players together. It was kind of difficult explaining why I wanted an empty box, and she was like "I do not understand why you want this empty box that should be thrown in the trash, but sure, go ahead and take it."

So here's my current collection (July 10th) plus the box. They are SO CUTE. The artwork is just amazing, both in the sense that they do a really great drawing of the players' faces, but also that the caricatures are so funny or appropriate.



If anyone happens to be collecting these, and wants to trade, let me know. I do tend to get one or two more per day, so there's a decent chance I'll collect the set on my own this month, even if it takes drastic measures like making my children students eat chocolate wafers for me (a la Willy Wonka).

Or if anyone has extras from past years I'd love to trade for some of those too...

I never did finish writing up all of the Mint stores in Tokyo, but I just revisited Mint Ikebukuro this weekend, and they have a MAD sale on old boxes of packs. I got a box of 2002 Preview (15 packs, 8 cards per pack) for Y597, and a box of 2003 2nd Version light packs (20 packs, 4 cards per pack) for Y630. They've also got a ton of great interesting game-collected stuff now -- including a series of Lawson's cards that are only available at the Sapporo Dome, apparently. I couldn't justify buying them at around 800-1000 per card, but they featured things like the 9-man hero interview, funny pictures of guys like Kensuke and Naoto dressed up as chefs, special cards for the cheer girls and other Sapporo Dome things, and so on.

Also, if you want collated sets of some of the recent boxes, with no insert cards, you can get things like the Seibu 30th Anniversary regular cards for Y1260. They've also got the Tokyo Big 6 College set, normally 2000 for all 6 teams, broken out so you can get each team's set for Y450 (but of course they had none of Waseda and Rikkio). I also poked through the Hakata Lions historical set (which is only worth it for the Inao cards IMO), and they also had the Johnny Kuroki set collated out for... I forget, it was like 900 yen maybe. Oh, and in further awesomeness, they had IBARAKI GOLDEN GOLDS CARDS! I wonder how hard it is to get one of Ayumi Kataoka...

And if you are a Tigers fan or Baystars fan you can look through the ridiculously cute little figurines they have. It's 315 to buy a box with one unknown one in there, or anywhere from 400 to 800 yen to choose the one you want (though to be fair, they didn't have any Kanemoto or Miura or whatnot, so it might get more expensive for those guys):



Also, I need to sort of take back what I said before about the proprietors there, because the guys who were there on Monday when I went were really funny. (Plus when I told them I hate the Giants and have cards/etc from the games, they were like "Please bring it here! We are happy to buy Giants crap from Giants-haters!")

But if you're looking for packs of cards, I would actually suggest going to Mint Akihabara, of all places.

Mint Akihabara

Location: 東京都千代田区外神田1-15-16　秋葉原ラジオ会館2F (Google Map)
Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Sotokanda 1-15-16, Akihabara Radio Kaikan 2nd Floor

Hours: 11am - 8pm, every day

Directions: Exit the JR Akihabara station for Akihabara Electric Town (the west side). Take the south choice of the two exits on that side, and Radio Kaikan will be right across the street. Go up the stairs to the second floor and turn left, then right, and you should see it. (There might be more than one stair, though.)

Size / Type: Mall store. Small.

People: Eh. I actually think I heard them talking about me, but I am used to ignoring it now, so maybe I was just imagining it.

Stock of interest: Not much, BUT, they have TONS OF PACKS ON SALE. AND MAJORLY ON SALE AT THAT. LIKE 15% OFF SALE.

2008 BBM 1st Version packs were going for 178 each, as opposed to the normal 210. That's just crazy mad sale. Team packs, normally 420, were selling for 357. They had the Tokyo Big Six box set for 1800 yen (10% off). They also had boxes of team packs and of the normal BBM packs, though I forget the price exactly. It was a good price, in the 25% off range, IIRC.

On the other hand their prices for single cards was retarded. Stuff that would be 50 yen, or 30 yen, or even 10 yen at other Mint stores, was all in the 80 yen - 200 yen range here. And their collections of single cards was terrible. The only funny part was that I found an I.D. 1993 card of Takuro Ishii for 30 yen. The guy had this look of "Why is this so cheap?" combined with "Why does this crazy American want it?" when I bought it.

Also, the store is like 80% gal cards, ie, the cards of women in bikinis and stuff like that. Then 15% is soccer cards, which leaves like 5% for baseball.

Basically, I think the reason to go here is if you are already in Akihabara for other reasons and were thinking of picking up packs of baseball cards, you can get a pretty darn good deal.

Now, if you live in Saitama, I would highly recommend Mint Urawa or Mint Minami-Koshigaya. Koshigaya for their prices, Urawa for their INSANE awesome stash of cards which I still haven't finished going through after 3 visits.

Mint Minami-Koshigaya

Location: 埼玉県越谷市南越谷1-15-1　南越谷オーパ4F
Saitama-ken, Koshigaya-shi, Minami-Koshigaya 1-15-1, Minami-Koshigaya OPA 4F

Hours: 10am - 8pm, every day

Directions: From either the south exit of JR Minami-Koshigaya or the east exit of Tobu Minami-Koshigaya, go through the taxi turnaround and all, and turn left onto the main-street-seeming road (go past the pachinko parlor and the restaurant food court mall on your left). After walking a little bit you'll see a drugstore on your left if you're on the right street. Go two blocks -- they're two long blocks -- and you'll see the OPA mall kitty-cornered to you. Go in there, find the escalator, go to the 4th floor, you really can't miss this place.

Size/Type: Mall, but BIG for a mall store, relatively

People: Nice, friendly guys. I even forgot my point card there one time and the guy made me a special receipt so I could get my point card stamped the next time I came in.

Stock of interest: EVERYTHING IS CHEAP! Packs are all 10% off! Box sets are usually majorly discounted too! And single cards are almost free!

No, really:



The selection is kind of crappy, but depending on what you are looking for, and when you go, you can get some amazing deals here. Single cards from most BBM years are only 10 yen. Even from THIS YEAR, assuming they aren't popular players. (I got the "Goodbye Yukio Tanaka" card from the 2008 BBM 1st set for 10 yen.) Think about that -- a pack of 8 cards costs 189 yen there, but you can get 8 cards for 80 yen. Crazy, huh?

However, most player single cards from this year are 31 yen, or 100 yen for more popular ones, and so on. But still, if you are trying to collect a few obscure guys or weird farm team guys, you could really luck into some stuff here.

And the box discounts are nuts. I got the 2006 Nippon Series box for 1313 yen there a couple of months ago (50% off the normal 2625). Got a Fighters Spirit box, minus the insert card, for 700 yen. There were other boxes there for equally insane prices too.

I would recommend going to this place if you live close enough that it won't cost a ton to get there by train, or if you'll be in the area for some other reason (I can't really think of why, though; I usually go there on my way there or back from Chiba or Kamagaya since I take the Musashino-sen). The pack and box discounts are pretty awesome, but it might not offset the crazy cost of getting out there.


I'll have to write about Mint Urawa some other time (and Mint Hachioji, Tachikawa, Yokohama, Fujisawa, Komagome) when I'm not dead tired.

Today I'm going to the Marines-Dragons game in Chiba! Exciting! I hope it stops raining, and I hope the starters are Masa and Komiyama, because they both turn 43 later this season, and I really want to see a Masa start before it's too late. (The other thing I want to see in person is a Kenshin home run. I doubt that one will happen.)

A few days ago I mentioned that Calbee 2008 Pro Yakyu chips are officially out. Given that BBM isn't releasing the 2008 Series 1 cards until April 17th (at least that's what the kind folks down at the Jimbocho branch of Mint told me last weekend when I stopped by), Calbee is what we've got for now. I was at the supermarket last night for my normal grocery shopping trip, and grabbed three bags of Pro Yakyu Chips because I'm incredibly weak-willed. (Cards: Hiroshima's Masayuki Hasegawa, Hawks' Tsuyoshi Wada, and Chunichi's Kazuhiro Wada. Whatta lotta Wada.)

So I'm thinking about how unhealthy it is to bundle baseball cards with potato chips, and I round the corner to the breakfast/tea aisle, and I can't believe what I see on display there:





Yes, this is some kind of tie-in from Kellogg's. As far as I can tell, they're putting MLB baseball cards inside BREAKFAST CEREAL boxes. Which isn't all too strange in some senses; I certainly remember wanting to collect cereal toys when I was a kid (and my mom telling me no). But as an answer to Pro Yakyu Chips it's pretty funny!



There's also a chance to get "MLB Rare Goods" like baseballs and jerseys.



"Corn Frosties", "Genmai Flakes", "Frostie Crunch", and "Coco-kun no Chocowa".

I've been requested to bring back some genmai flakes for a friend when I go to the US in a week or two anyway. This is a perfect excuse to buy them! (But I didn't think of that last night.)

The only thing that'd be better is if they had Japanese player tie-ins for these, like Fukumori Flakes or Fukudome Frosties. Although, come to think of it, given the Mariners' opening day game, "Fukumori Flakes" isn't really that far off.

(zing!)

The shelf at the Sunkus had many bright snacks,
I glanced through the boxes, looked through the racks,
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a bag full of chips saying baseball is here!
My thoughts were all scattered, like crumbs on the floor,
As I purchased the goodies and bounced from the store.
Away to my workplace I flew like a flash,
Tore open the package and looked at the stash.
His bat was a-swinging, his gloves were so pink,
I knew in a moment it must be Hiroyuki Nakajima.


Seriously. Last year every time I opened a bag of Calbee pro yakyu chips I seemed to get Ogasawara's clean-shaven doppleganger, so this is a vast improvement. On the other hand, I hadn't eaten potato chips in a really long time, so this might be bad for my health. On the other hand, now that there are Calbee 2008 baseball cards, the 2008 season is officially started!

Other stuff happened today too.
Hideki Matsui got married, but he won't give any details about his new wife. Even on the Japanese news they basically showed only him, he had a wedding ring on and had a sketch of his wife and was like "sorry... she's shy, I'm shy, okay?" Apparently he had a bet with Derek Jeter about who would get married first, though, which is pretty crazy.

Masumi Kuwata decided to retire. He'll be 40 on Tuesday and has been playing baseball professionally longer than BOTH of tonight's starters in the Fighters-Seibu game (Wakui and Darvish) have been alive.

Speaking of which, the Fighters won tonight's game, but barely. It was still tied 0-0 going into the 10th inning. Darvish pitched 9 innings, and Hisashi Takeda handled the top of the 10th. Wakui continued into the bottom of the 10th. Sledge walked, Konta pinch-ran, Koyano bunted Konta over, and then they intentionally walked Itoi and Naoto Inada to get to Tsuruoka (for a double play?), except the Fighters had SECRET WEAPON SHINJI who singled home the winning run. Fighters 1, Seibu 0.

I got my plane tickets and hotel reservation for my Sapporo trip, so I'll be up there from May 1 to May 4. Woohoo!

Mint in Ikebukuro is actually two floors. The floors aren't connected; if you want to go up to the 2F store you have to exit the 1F store and go upstairs and enter the other half, which is odd but normal for Japanese buildings.

Mint Ikebukuro 1F
Mint Ikebukuro 2F
("Trading cards, sports figures")

Location: 東京都豊島区東池袋1-28-6 (Google Map)
Tokyo-to, Toshima-ku, Higashi Ikebukuro 1-28-6

Hours: 1F: 11am - 8pm (every day, both floors)

Directions: From the JR Ikebukuro station, pretend you're going to the Sunshine 60 building. Take the "Sunshine Exit", which is on the east side of the station, and walk forward until you can bear left and follow the crowds crossing the big intersection to "Sunshine Road" (there'll be a Lotteria on the left and a Sanrio Gift Gate on your right once you enter the correct street, also a Shakey's on your left). Walk down Sunshine Road for 3 blocks and turn right on the corner with the Sega arcade, the Matsuya, and most importantly, the 50-yen arcade with all the UFO catchers. Go halfway down that block and it'll be on your left.

Size / Type: Standalone store, relatively huge, TWO FLOORS!

People: Eh. I was sort of put off both by the proprietors and the clientele but I might have just been there at a bad time, plus I got angry listening to them talking about how they wished they'd gotten Ogasawara signed stuff when he was on the Fighters because now they're worth more with him on the Giants grrrrr.

Stock of interest: The first floor is mostly soccer stuff with a handful of baseball stuff, nothing too exciting, some random packs and a lot of rookie cards, some figurines, a bit of soccer memorabilia and some MLB stuff.

The second floor has lots of boxes full of single cards you can look through, plus ample counter space to do so -- two full counter/bookcases of baseball card boxes. Handful of interesting cards from the early 90's, lots from the later 90's. Team sets not as well-organized but they make up for it by having more sets of stuff to poke through. This store had a full array of Rookie Edition sets from both this year and a few past years, including lots of the insert cards, and team rookie sets. Pretty big amount of single cards labelled as normal, which means they cost 50 yen each, and that includes way old stuff too.

Lots of packs but nothing too old or exciting, just a lot of 2007 team packs and they did have 2007 1st Edition, at least. Also plenty of the normal assortment of MLB stuff.

The thing is, the other two counter/bookcases are full of soccer cards and bikini model cards, which makes for some interesting clientele. The other problem is that the cases are pretty close to each other -- if one person is standing there looking at cards, it's difficult for another person to squeeze by them to look at other stuff.

What I bought:

Photo

Shigetoshi Hasegawa 1992 BBM (50 yen!)
Masahiro Tanaka 2007 Rookie Edition (300 yen)
Masahiko Morino 2007 Rookie Edition insert card reflector (250 yen)
Two packs of BBM 1st Edition (210 yen each)

I got a Shogo Akada signature insert card in the BBM 1st packs, plus a Munenori Kawasaki, plus a Carp Yuuki Saitoh, so I was happy with that.

Logic on the Masahiro Tanaka card: basically, I didn't care if I got the entire Rookie Edition, I just wanted one card from each team since they have a rookie group photo on the back of all of them, and after like 3 packs, the only team I had no cards from was Rakuten. So, I had decided I would stop buying packs and just buy one Rakuten card -- BUT, if I was gonna spend 50 yen on like, Naoto Watanabe, why not just splurge the 300 yen for Masahiro Tanaka? And then I made the mistake of looking through the Rookie Edition insert cards and I found the Morino card in with the "1997 Rookie Special" reflectors and... and... yeah. I actually had looked for an early Morino card in the 1997-2000ish singles but didn't find any, sadly.

Something seriously surreal in this store was seeing, in the early 1990's sets, say, a Takashi Saitoh 1993 card for 50 yen next to a Kazuhiro Sasaki card from the same set going for 800 yen. Also lots of early Motonobu Tanishige cards, when he was on the Baystars. (There really were a lot of great players on the Baystars at one point, but they all moved on elsewhere, it seemed.)

(Man, now I'm wishing I'd really taken notes on what some of these places had, but I'm mostly going on my memory of what I looked through, plus what things I thought about buying. Anywhere that still had BBM 2007 1st, I bought a pack, too.)

I want to write reviews of the Mint stores, but I keep thinking "I don't have time to write all of them right now" and not doing it, so I'll try to do one at a time. I just visited the Mint store in Chiba yesterday, so here's what I have to say about it:

Mint Chiba

"Trading cards, sports figures, hobby collections, capsule/gacha"

Location: 千葉県千葉市中央区富士見2-3-1　BEE-ONE3F (Google Map)
Chiba-ken, Chiba-shi, Chuo-ku, Fujimi 2-3-1, Bee-One building, third floor

Hours: 9:30am - 8pm, every day

Directions: From JR Chiba station (or Keisei Chiba, or Monorail Chiba), go to the east exit of the JR Chiba station. There'll be a big parking turnaround. Walk down the sidewalk on your left side -- you'll see a Jonathan's diner in the distance, walk towards it but DON'T WALK TO IT. Instead, a bit before you hit the crossroads you'll see an "Underground passage". Go downstairs into the underground passage and take exit "B1". When you come up from the stairs, there are a few big commercial buildings on your right. Walk up the block a bit and one of them has a sign for Yodobashi Camera - no, sadly not in English, but you can't miss it if you can read katakana. Go into that building, and there should be elevators on both sides of you before you actually get into the Yodobashi store. Take the elevators to the 3rd floor, which is a mall-like area, walk past the guitar shop, and you'll see the Mint store (and after it, Yellow Submarine).

Size / Type: Mall store, medium size

People: Polite enough (There was just one guy at the counter and I didn't really talk to him until I was ready to buy, but he didn't seem freaked out by having an American chick picking through the books of cards)

Stock of interest: 2005 unopened packs (BBM 2nd, Hanshin Tigers, Dragons, some other team packs. 4-card 2005 2nd sets for 100 yen in clear plastic so you can see the top card, 4-card 2004 sets in the same way. Konami 2005 Prime Nine packs for Orix, Dragons, Carp. Lots of 2006 packs including BBM 1st AND 2nd, team packs, etc. Binder with Calbee cards from the 1970's (I was so excited to see a Yoshiro Sotokoba card from 1975 that I actually said "Holy crap!!" out loud and got some funny looks. It only cost 400 yen! But I don't really need it.)

NOT much before 1998 in terms of BBM, surprisingly, and very few single cards before 2005.

They had a LOT of team sets for reasonable prices, but just for common cards. So if you want, you could pay 1000 yen and get all 36 Swallows cards in the 2007 1st Edition, and then also get all 15 Swallows cards in 2007 BBM 2nd Edition for another 500 yen. (I actually was looking for Swallows sets for a friend.) But that doesn't include any of the extras for players (Gold gloves, "Be Aggressive", etc).

Another thing that was both cool and uncool was -- in their older BBM sets, say 2002, you could get crazy deals where it'd be like, 100 yen for 10 cards from a team from that year. The catch is that they were all wrapped, so you could only see the first card and the last card in the set, and couldn't just look through all the individual cards to see what they had. I picked up a Dragons 2002 set because I saw Morino on top and Tatsunami on the bottom, though. I figured, "If separate cards are normally 50 yen and so these are two cards I want, I'm essentially getting 8 cards free!"

The binders were really neat, you could look through team sets and see the "puzzle piece" cards as they should be when assembled. This is particularly neat for the "Hashire, Norichika!" 12-card Aoki set in this year's Yakult team packs, or the 6-card "Kyuuji Special" in Hanshin's packs, or the Chunichi/Fighters/etc 3-card sets I showed in some of my other baseball card posts here. They also had the individual cards in binders for many boxed sets, like the all-star sets and so on.

They also HAD the Furuta retirement set normal 27 cards for only 500 yen... well, until I bought it, that is :) I do mean just the regular 27 cards -- apparently the 4000-yen boxed set comes with some special card, plus the box is special, but honestly I don't care that much about having the box.

There's a special box with lots of Chiba Lotte Marines cards, which shouldn't be surprising for the Chiba store. They also have a box of Marines rookie cards, which are really cool (but kind of expensive). There's also the usual "box of cards of Japanese players now in the majors", and there are some boxes of normal MLB cards too, but I don't pay much attention to those.

This store also has a ton of soccer cards, as well as "idol" cards, ie, collectable cards of Japanese bikini models. It also had a lot of figurines of both sports and other things; you could get a complete 12-set of those capsule game baseball figures for 5800 yen, but since I got to see them all I decided I didn't REALLY want them.

What I bought:

Photo

2 packs of 1st edition 2007 BBM (210 yen each)
1 pack of 2nd edition 2005 BBM (210 yen)
2 plastic 4-packs of 2nd edition 2005 BBM (one with Ogasawara on top, one with Shinji Takahashi) (100 yen each)
1 10-card plastic pack of Chunichi Dragons 2002 (100 yen)
Furuta intai set, 27 regular cards (500 yen)
Yukio Tanaka "Rookie Edition" 2003 BBM card (50 yen)

I have to write about the Furuta set some other time just because it's really neat.

I didn't get anything super-inspiring in the BBM 2007 1sts, a few good players and a Matsuzaka golden glove card. Nor the 2005s, really, though I got a reflector card of a Nobuhiko Matsunaka "starting lineup" card from the same game as Seguignol.

Dragons 10-card set had Morino, Kawakami, Sekikawa, Ohnishi, H. Watanabe, Noguchi, Eiji Ochiai, Asakura, Makoto Kitoh, and Tatsunami. Not bad for 100 yen.


I'll hopefully talk about the other Mint stores soon. Last weekend I visited the Ikebukuro, Urawa, Fujisawa and Yokohama stores, and I usually frequent the Jimbocho store, and I'm going to go check out Komagome today.

Before I actually moved to Japan, the only places I ever knew of to buy baseball cards was at the baseball stadiums themselves, at the team goods stores. Now, living here and being an explorer in general, I've found lots of other places to buy cards, which is great. (My wallet disagrees with me, but whatever.) A few of these places in the Tokyo/Kanto area are:

The Sports Authority. The ones near me generally stock a lot more soccer goods than baseball goods, being as I'm in the same prefecture as the the Urawa Reds, but they'll have some baseball card packs lying around as well, usually just the current BBM set and maybe a few assorted team packs, plus some MLB Upper Deck packs and the like. They also usually have a whole bunch of Japanese player MLB goods (think Matsuzaka jerseys and jackets, or Yankees hats or Ichiro shirts) and not much in the way of NPB.

Yamashita Shoten by the Tokyo Dome.
Tokyo-to, Bunkyo-ku, Koraku 1-3-61 Kiiroi Building 2F
This bookstore is between the Tokyo Dome and Suidobashi JR station; from the Dome go down the walkway and stairs opposite Gate 23 and it's on your right before you hit the videogame arcade. They stock a ton of sports magazines and books in general and about 10 different types of baseball card packs (some team packs, some things like the Nostalgic set, then Rookie Edition and Back to the 70's, plus random things like Giants 2005, and they'll usually get in the boxes like the All-Star set, the Nippon Series set, the Furuta retirement set). This is also a pretty decent place to pick up monthly baseball magazines for various teams and leagues. I have an almost-weekly routine of going to the Tokyo Dome shop to look at team goods, then stopping by nearby Yamashita to actually get magazines or cards.

Shosen Book Mart in Jimbocho.
Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kanda Jimbocho 1-21-6
From Ochanomizu JR station, take the "Ochanomizu Bridge exit" and walk down the hill away from the river. You'll go through a whole ton of guitar shops, and then Meiji University will be on your right, and eventually you get to Yasukuni street; Shosen Bookmart is across the big intersection from you at that point. Go into the basement; near the entrance to your left you'll find various card packs (mostly team packs, plus last time they had some 2006 BBM 4-card sets for 100 yen each). In the back right corner there's also a ton of baseball books and magazines, including many "new" copies of "old" issues of stuff. Fantastic if you want things like a 2006 Japan Series program.

(As an aside, there is a used book store in Jimbocho called @wonder that has an AMAZING wall of old NPB books and magazines, including Shukan Baseball going back over 30 years, other old magazines and team books and whatnot. It is practically next door to the Jimbocho subway station exit A1, on Yasukuni Street. Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kanda Jimbocho 2-5-4)

Most other major book stores actually will have baseball card packs somewhere, if you just know where to look. This includes Kinokuniya (the large 8-floor Shinjuku branch has them on the 6th floor to the left of the cash registers; baseball books in general can be found in the front left corner of that floor) or Sanseido (the big store right across from Shosen has some packs by the escalators on the third floor)

R&B21 in both Ryogoku and Shinjuku (and Osaka!)
Ryogoku store Map: Tokyo-to, Sumida-ku, Ryogoku 4-37-2
Shinjuku store Map: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Nishi-Shinjuku 7-1-7
This is a really interesting store. They don't really have much in the way of Japanese baseball cards or packs or anything, which is kind of funny, but they're your place to go to if you're living in Japan and looking to buy or trade MLB cards, or football/hockey/basketball/etc. They make their very own patented thick card holders among other things. The people there are really nice, but they don't always have someone around who can speak English, which is odd considering their stock. However, if you're interested in their card holders, they can do English over email, and they're happy to ship them to other countries, and you can pay via Paypal and such. The above links are English directions to their stores, and I can at least vouch that the Ryogoku ones are valid.

I've bought things from all of the aforementioned places, but the real inspiration for writing about this is a store called Mint, which I have spent way too much time and money at in the last few weeks. See, most of the places I've listed here that sell NPB cards basically have them in packs. Mint is awesome because you can just go in and look through individual cards for hours and hours. Not that I've done that, of course... anyway, next post is going to be just about the different branches I've visited of the Mint store chain.

Let me know if this information is actually useful to anyone. I'll try to organize it better later.

I went to the Mint sports card store in Jimbocho the other day to complete my "Consecutive" sets of three cards in the Chunichi team sets; I wrote down which Masa and Kosuke cards I had and intended just to get those, but after I talked to the guy who runs the shop and he told me they were having a 20% off sale on individual non-priced cards (40 yen each instead of 50 yen), I couldn't resist looking through some of the other team sets to see if they also had similar cards, and thus ended up getting a whole bunch of sets of three.

(Also, wow, looking at that website I just realized there are a whole bunch of other Mint stores in the Tokyo area that I totally have to go visit. I need to find out if any of them either will take extra cards off my hands and/or if they have trading times.)

Anyway, these are the sets I was originally aiming for. The Chunichi Dragons 2007 set has 9 cards labelled "consecutive", three for Kenshin Kawakami, three for Kosuke Fukudome, and three for Masa Yamamoto. The idea with these cards is that if you have all three for one player and put them together, it makes a 9-frame picture of their throwing or batting motion. They look really cool together, though when you only have one or two of them separately, they look sort of stupid. Even cooler is how they're reversed on the back, so the middle picture is the same, but if you have the beginning or ending of the motion, you'll have the opposite card on the back. Okay, maybe that's not that cool, but I noticed it and thought so.

Forgive the angles on these shots; I was trying not to get the flash in the way.


"Consecutive" Kosuke Fukudome - Front

"Consecutive" Kosuke Fukudome - Back


"Consecutive" Kenshin Kawakami - Front

"Consecutive" Kenshin Kawakami - Back


"Consecutive" Masa Yamamoto - Front

"Consecutive" Masa Yamamoto - Back

Something kind of cool is how since Kosuke bats left-handed and Masa throws left-handed, their cards start from the right and go to the left, but since Kenshin throws right-handed, his card starts from the left.

So, I looked through the Fighters set to see if they had anything similar, since I only bought one team pack this year and hadn't seen all that many cards in the set. Sure enough, they had a Darvish set! Only it was labelled "Clever" instead of "Consecutive". That's appropriate, I suppose:



"Clever" Yu Darvish - Front

"Clever" Yu Darvish - Back

The Fighters set also had a three-card series set for Yukio Tanaka's 2000 hits, so I just HAD to get that one. It's only 6 pictures instead of the full 9, but that's okay:


"2000 Hits" Yukio Tanaka - Front

"2000 Hits" Yukio Tanaka - Back

Another major difference with the Yukio Tanaka set is that the backs of the cards are actually completely different. In the other sets it's the same text although the layout might be slightly different. In this set, each card has something else -- one card has Yukio's career stats, one has a picture of him holding up the "2000 Hits" plaque during the game, and the other has a bunch of text about his career as "Mr. Fighters" and all. It's pretty cool.

Last, I picked out one more set, from one of my absolute favorite pitchers on the planet. These cards were 100 yen each, but I couldn't resist.


"Gorgeous" Shunsuke Watanabe - Front

"Gorgeous" Shunsuke Watanabe - Back

Yeah, they call Shunsuke's card set "Gorgeous", and it is a really nice set of cards, but I think it would have made more sense to just call it "Submarine", heh. I think it looks really neat to have his motion taken frame-by-frame like this on the cards.

Of course, I also kind of want Hisashi Yamada's reflector card from the Back to the 70's set, but that was going for like 400 yen. His normal card in that set doesn't have him in full submarine mode, so it's not as cool.

I don't think there are any more of these three-card sets that I'm interested in (looking at the set list I can't really tell what other threes there are besides the Violent Arakaki one offhand, which I didn't like) though I didn't really have time to look through all of the sets while I was there. Next time, maybe.

Anyway, to lead into a future post I want to show the last two cards I bought:


Draft Story, Yukihiro Nishizaki and Tadanori Ishii - front


Draft Story, Nishizaki and Ishii - back

The "Draft Story" cards are last year's "historic" set, much like this year's "Back to the 70's" set. They show what a player looked like and what his number was when he was drafted -- as seen in my earlier card post, they showed things like Osamu Hamanaka wearing #66, Hirokazu Ibata wearing #48, and so on.

Anyway, as for what the real STORY is here, I'll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with Yukihiro Nishizaki, for once, I just thought the card looked cool. Take a look at the Ishii card? Do you kind of wonder who this "Tadanori Ishii" guy is? Doesn't he look an awful lot like some other guy we know on the Bay Stars now, named "Takuro Ishii"?

Yeah. Somehow, despite actually being a fairly big Takuro fan, I never knew that he changed his name when he changed positions from being a pitcher to an infielder. Go figure. I know he's got a lot of stories in his past, just from his wikipedia page and from japanbaseballdaily, but now I'm really curious and want to find out more. He's already in the Meikyukai and might end up in the Hall of Fame someday too, so it's well worth the research :)

I have two baseball card posts to make, but this is the one I meant to make several days ago and didn't.

See, I have a new bad habit now. Rather than spending too much on random packs of cards, now I've been spending too much on random BAGS of random packs of cards. These are called "Fukubukuro", which means "lucky bag". At the Mint card shop, they basically say "Pay 1000 yen, get 3000 yen worth of random card packs". Which is true, but since you can't pick them, it can get interesting. So you get TWO levels of "open it and see what you got!!", first for the packs in the fukubukuro and then for the cards in the packs. Fun!

My first time, the bag had some Dragons and Hawks packs and some Draft Story packs. My second time, the bag had three Seibu Lions packs, one Hanshin Tigers, one Hiroshima Carp, and three Touch the Game 2006 packs. My third time... it had the exact same thing as the second time, since I got it a week later and the bag was the same color. I'm holding off for a few weeks before buying another one I think.


Second Fukubukuro, pre-pack opening. Whee.

At least I'm spending less overall -- I only buy cards once per week and if I only buy one fukubukuro, that's 1000 yen. Could be worse.

Anyway, my first Carp pack was vaguely exciting, with a Shinji Sasaoka reflector card and an Eishin Soyogi team card, and a Maeda Spotlight; it might have been one of the best packs in my first Fukubukuro. My second one wasn't quite as exciting but still wasn't too bad -- a Koichi Ogata title holder card, a Shigenobu Shima reflector card, and a card for Jeff Livesey-coach, which isn't quite as cool as a Marty Brown card, but not terrible either. I'm really not that excited about the Carp as a team in general, which is why it's just not all that exciting to open the packs. But, I do think it's a nice set. I did want a Saitoh Yuuki card :)


Hiroshima Carp - two packs

The Tigers packs really annoyed me. You know, I didn't think it was possible to get doubles of a card IN THE SAME PACK, but apparently... no, okay, so what happened is that I got a Naohisa Sugiyama normal card AND a Sugiyama reflector card in the sae pack. It's not a double exactly, but seriously, the most exciting card in that first pack was the "Good luck Kei Igawa!!" card. The second pack was much better, with an Okada-kantoku, and a "Kyuji Special" card of Kyuji Fujikawa, and a Makoto Imaoka reflector car, and normal cards of ex-Fighter Itsuki Shoda, and of ex-Pirate Ryan Vogelsong.


Hanshin Tigers - two packs

The next big set of crap I had to look at was the Seibu Lions team sets. Nevermind that I don't particularly like the Lions to begin with, this set kind of made me sad. I think the "Shining" cards are nice, and the Lion Heart ones are kind of cool, but I got a bazillion doubles in just 6 packs, which is not reassuring. Also, I did not get a normal Hideaki Wakui card, which also made me sad.

First pack, best cards: Kataoka reflector, normal Hiroyuki Nakajima
Second pack, best cards: Toru Hosokawa, Kazuhiro Wada, team check list
Third pack, best cards: Lion Hearts for Fukuchi and Liefer, mascot card
Fourth pack, best cards: normal Kataoka card
Fifth pack, best cards: normal Gissel, Onodera; Lion Hearts of Wakui
Sixth pack, best card: Nakajima Lion Heart card -- already a double. Oi.

Just really not that exciting. I did get a Ginjiro Sumitani card in there somewhere too, and doubles of the team checklist and several of the Lion Hearts, but eh.


Seibu Lions - six packs

Last to open from the Fukubukuro packs was the "Touch the Game" cards. These are super-expensive and I don't entirely understand why they're supposed to be so good. They're really thick cards and they have pretty pictures, I guess, and most of the players on them are superstars, basically. I'm not angry that I have them but I doubt I would ever buy these packs on my own, which is part of what makes the Fukubukuro so cool -- getting to experience these other cards. And every pack DID have plenty of exciting players in it, so that was nice at least.

First pack: Darvish portrait, Masahide Kobayashi card
Second pack: Dragonbutts. Nakata portrait, cards of Asakura and Kawakami
Third pack: Pitcherlicious. Iwase, Wakui, Uehara
Fourth pack: Fun. Hichori, Fukumori, Kroon, Ramirez
Fifth pack: Yagi, Shinjo, and Yoshinobu Takahashi
Sixth pack: Hair. Daisuke Miura, and a Kenta Kurihara portrait


Touch the Game - six packs

I'm including these here because I also bought three packs of the Rookie Edition lately. I really just want to collect one from each team since they have the "new player picture" on the back. Though the cards are really cute too, so it's not all bad. They have the incoming players, and then some 2006 rookies as well, in action. Plus I got another Naomichi Donoue card, which is always exciting. I'm only missing one team now, and that's Rakuten. I wonder if the entire set is rarer because of Masahiro Tanaka?


Rookie edition - some loose cards, some booked cards

My next card post is going to talk about the neat series of cards I got yesterday at Mint, as well as a rant about the Back to the 70's card set, perhaps.

Hey, if Pat Neshek can write posts like this, so can I.

A few days ago a Canadian friend of mine asked if I could go hunt down some special card cases for him and some super-thick hockey autograph cards he was collecting. Since I'd never been to Ryogoku before, I figured, what the heck, I'll go to the shop and see what they have. My friend Pau, who is one of the most awesome baseball geeks I've ever had the fortune to meet, came along with me in the hopes of finding some more NPB cards. Oddly, this store had tons of MLB cards, tons of Hockey cards, Basketball cards, American FOOTBALL cards, etc, etc -- but no Japanese baseball cards!

Either way, we found the cardholders, I bought one, got the paper explaining it in English, and also found out my friend in Canada should be able to order them online. Score.

Afterwards, Pau and I spent the day basically hunting down and trading NPB cards in Jimbocho. It was awesome. First we stopped for lunch and exchanged as many doubles as we could from the BBM 2007 set, and went through Pau's Nostalgic Baseball collection to see what he was missing.

We found the card store I'd been talking about and probably spent over an hour there just looking through old boxes of cards. ("Look," I happily exclaimed, "I found a Hiromitsu Ochiai card from when he was still a player!" "Whoa," replied Pau, "He had hair back then!")

We each bought a "Fukubukuro" bag from the card shop. These are "lucky bags", usually you see them in a department store -- they've put a whole bunch of random stuff inside a bag, you can't look inside, and you pay some arbitrary price for every bag. You might either get some totally awesome stuff worth a lot more than that, or you might get something completely useless. The card shop guy said "Well, these cost 1000 yen, but it has 3000 yen worth of random baseball packs inside!"

Eventually we went to a coffeeshop and sat down and got out all of our packs we'd bought. We also bought Sanseido out of their last 6 Nostalgic Baseball packs, and I also bought two more BBM 1st Version 2007 packs.

Inside the Fukubukuro was two Draft Story packs, three Softbank Hawks team packs, three Chunichi Dragons team packs, and inside mine there was also a Takahiro Yamazaki autograph card. (Yeah, I know. I saw Rakuten and Yamasaki and was like "DUDE!!!!" then "Oh. That one.") Since each team pack costs 420 yen normally, it really was 3000 yen worth of packs inside, so that's pretty cool.

I traded Pau my BBM 1st packs for his Chunichi Dragons packs, and also told him I'd give him any new cards from the Nostalgic set. And thus we erupted in a mad plastic-ripping rampage, surfacing occasionally to say things like "Hey, do you have a Nagashima already?" or "Yay! Another Naomichi!"

First we settled the Nostalgic packs. These are a set of baseball cards that are entirely of Japanese baseball stars from 50-60 years ago. Pau has most of the set now and is missing like 20 cards. I think he got one new card in his 3 packs but he got 4 or 5 from my packs, so it wasn't a complete loss. He gave me ALL of his doubles, so now I've got around half the set too! Yay! What beautiful cards!


BBM 2006 Nostalgic Baseball cards

Then we went through our Draft Story packs. Both of Pau's packs had mostly really old players so I wasn't all that excited about it, but my first Draft Story pack had, I kid you not, an Ichiro card, a Tsuyoshi Nishioka, a Kazuhiro Wada, an Osamu Hamanaka, and a Naoki Takahashi (older player from the Toei Flyers). Pretty cool, especially since I like Hamanaka and because Ichiro's card actually had the "Suzuki 51" uniform picture on it from the way old Orix days.

I open my second Draft Story pack and I swear the first card is Hirokazu Ibata, who I totally love, so I'm like IBATA! OMG! The second card is Koji Uehara. OMG UEHARA! The third is Katsuaki Furuki, which isn't terrible but isn't particularly exciting. Then the fourth is MICHIHIRO OGASAWARA and I nearly completely flip out, it's this cute young smiling catcher Ogasawara on the Fighters. AWWWWW! Before Ogasawara went to the Dark Side, I was totally obsessing over finding one of his rookie cards. This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's got the same purpose - a card with a really young picture of him as a catcher. At that point I notice the fifth card in the pack...

...it's Daisuke freaking Matsuzaka.

We're both stunned.

Pau's like "I think you just pulled the single best Draft Story pack known to man."


BBM 2007 Draft Story cards

After that we went through our Softbank and Chunichi packs. The Hawks ones are kind of nice though nothing came out that was super-exciting -- I did get a Munenori Kawasaki card, so that was good, and a silver Sadaharu Oh card which is really pretty. The Chunichi ones are kind of interesting, although the stupid part about team sets in general is that they make cards for EVERYONE on the team, and this includes the minor leaguers who don't even get playing time at ni-gun, plus every single coach on the team, and so on and so forth, so even if you're a gigantic fan of the team you still probably won't know who everyone is. I'm pretty sure I literally have a card for every single Dragons coach ever in existence now, but I DIDN'T get an Ochiai card, which was kind of sad. I also did get two more Naomichi Donoue cards, but I didn't get a lot of the normal lineup guys like Morino and Araki and Ibata and all, so I was a little disappointed. I did get a Kenshin Kawakami "Shining" card which was really pretty, though.

One cool thing about the Chunichi set: They have this bunch of cards called "Consecutive". Apparently it's for a few players -- I got one of Kosuke Fukudome and two of Masa Yamamoto -- and if you collect ALL of the cards for that player it will line up and look like their pitching motion or their batting stance. Each card had three pictures on it and looked sort of like a puzzle piece. I need to go back to the card shop and try to see the others in the series sometime.

Another cool thing about the Hawks and Dragons cards is that I got two guys who I saw in my first ever Fighters game. One is Tatsuya Ide, who is now a coach for the Hawks, and the other was Hiroshi Narahara, who is now a coach for the Dragons.


My Fukubukuro cards

I also traded Pau a non-double 2007 1st card of Takashi Toritani for another Naomichi Donoue he got in his BBM 2007 1st packs that I'd traded him. Pau's really a Tigers fan and I'm really a Fighters fan, but we both follow most of the league in general, so it works out well.

After that, we played a baseball dice game called Replay Baseball for a while. We played a game of the 2005 Mariners vs. the 2005 Athletics. That was so funny! King Felix started against Danny Haren and the A's won 2-1. The funniest thing is that while rolling dice and seeing the results I kept feeling like I totally remembered all of these things happening in real life in 2005, heh. The other thing is that I had Matt Thornton pitch for me and he didn't suck. But everything else about the game was fairly accurate, especially the part where Ichiro was the only one who could consistently get on base.

The coffee shop kicked us out pretty much right as we were finishing the last half-inning of our dice game, since they were closing. Then I went home, buying another B5 trading card book at the 100-yen shop and organized a few more cards into it. It had been about 3 years since I'd gotten to open packs with someone else, so I'd forgotten exactly how awesome it is. Good times.