Before Japan's Basketball B League was formed last year through the merger of the NBL and bj leagues, Yuta Tabuse was a star for the NBL's Tochigi Brex.  Surprisingly, BBM did not jump on board with getting the NBL license to print cards so NBL had their own cards printed.  Here is a somewhat difficult 2015-2016 card to find of Yuta Tabuse in his NBL uniform.


Here is also some numbered goodness from 2004, an Upper Deck Rookie Sweet Shot Rookie card numbered 707/1250.

That is it for this evening.  Check out my 1997 Japanese Bandai K-1 MMA pack opening over at A Pack to Be Named Later.

A huge thanks to Steve K. for hooking me up with three more Airport Trading Cards.  My passion for flying made these an instant set I needed to collect.  A few people are actively trading and selling these cards, but Steve K. went above and beyond with a few of his extras.  I have 49 of these out of about 70 total in the set.  These last 20 are going to be tough!  If anyone lives near any of these airports, I'd be more than willing to pay for your time and shipping for any of these cards.

21D - Lake Elmo Airport, MN
ANE -  Anoka County - Blaine Airport, MN
AVL - Ashville Regional Airport, NC
BNA -  Nashville, International Airport, TN
BOS - Logan International Airport, MA
FCM - Flying Cloud Airport, MN
GSO -  Piedmont Triad International Airport, NC
MDW -  Chicago Midway International Airport, IL
MIC - Crystal Aiport, MN
MKE - General Mitchell International Airport, WI
MSN - Dane County Regional Airport, WI
RDU - Raleigh-Durham, NC
SJC - San Jose International Airport, CA
SLC - Salt Lake City International Airport, UT
SSF - Stinson Municipal Airport, TX
STP - St. Paul Downtown Airport, MN
YLW - Kelowna Airport, Canada
YOW - Ottowa/Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, Canada
YTZ - Toronto/City Centre Airport, Canada
YYC - Calgary International Airport, Canada,

Back in March of this year I did a quick summary of the 2015 BBM Legends Set.  I was finally able to pick up a complete base set of these and wanted to show a few more below.  The 72-card set is broken up into 2 subsets.  The first subset (#1-#64) are pictures of the retired wrestlers, who are now stable masters, back in their active years.  All of these shots are pre-bout warm-up photos and are colored depending on how high of rank the wrestler achieved during his career.  For example, the Yokozuna (Grand Champions) have pink coloring on the front, the Ozeki (Champions) are purple, and so on.  The backs contain a recent "mug shot" of the wrestler in a suit and tie as well as all the statistics of the wrestler throughout his career as well as a little anecdotal write up on the bottom.  The second subset (#65-72), called Early Days, show very early photos of eight popular, but recently retired wrestlers.  These are done with a gold/brown hue on the front.  The backs of these also include another early photo of the wrestler along with career statistics and an anecdotal write up along the bottom.  I did not get any of the 58 autograph cards (an example is at the very bottom) that were also randomly included as part of this set.  I'll have to save chasing those for later.

As a completionist sumo card collector, I don't envy the Japanese Baseball Card community.  The vast amounts of baseball cards, compared to sumo wrestling cards, would overwhelm me fairly quickly....as which happened to me in the early 1990s when the explosion of sets made it difficult for me to keep my focus.  So hats off to the Japanese Baseball Collectors and I really enjoy reading your blogs about the new and vast amounts of sets that are released every year.  For the sumo card collector we've been limited to 1-2 sets per year since 1997.....until 2015.  It wasn't until I got a hold of a SMC checklist that I was able to decipher the "craziness" of 2015 when three, yes three, sumo wrestling sets were released.

The first set is the standard "Regular" set that BBM has released the past 19 years which includes cards of all the top division wrestlers as well as smaller subsets .  However, 2015 was the first year the set shrunk to an all-time low of 90 cards in the base set, but it does contain 9 different Autograph Cards (all #ed to 60) of active wrestlers to make the master set complete at 99 cards.  The star power of the autographs is not very strong and only containing some of the lower sanyaku ranks.  Since this is the standard BBM sumo set, it was released right at the beginning of the year and contains a comprehensive checklist of all the top division wrestlers.

Regular Set #2 - Yokozuna Kakuryu

Regular Set - Aminishiki Autograph (#d to 60)

The second set is a set called "Essence" (粋) and features 81 cards in the base set and 9 different Autograph Cards (all #ed to 60) of active wrestlers making the master set 90 cards.  To be honest, I am really not sure what the big difference is between this and the Regular set above although one of the past Sports Card Magazines (SCM) likely explains the set release.  It was released later in the year (summer) and captures only the popular rikishi of the time and eliminates a lot of the lower ranked wrestlers from the checklist, but also tries and captures popular and up-and-coming rikishi.  There are 4 subsets including one dedicated to the gyoji (referees) and the subsets have more candid themes versus the more "serious" of the Regular set.  The star power of the autographs has greatly increased with this set and it captures all three Ozeki at the time (Kisenosato, Kotoshogiku, Goeido)

Essence Set #42 - Maegashira Chiyomaru

Essence Set - Terunofuji Autograph (#ed to 60)

The third set is another Legend set called "Most Valuable Asset (MVA)" (至宝) and is similar to the 2013 Legend set called "Glory".   The Legend MVA set features 72 famous retired rikishi in action shots on the cards.  However, the main draw of this set is the massive autograph checklist of 58 different wrestlers (#ed from 30 to 90 of each card) including some great like Kitanoumi, Chiyonofuji and Taknohana.  The big downside, however, is that they are all sticker autographs....For such a significant set and limited autographs, it would have been nice to see on-card autos.

Legend SVM #5 - Yokozuna Onokuni

Legend SVM - Chiyonofuji Autograph (#ed to 90)

There you have it, all three sets laid out.  Looking forward to picking some of these sets up for cheap and I'll soon be checklisting them in English to include in my book.  The next edition of the SCM is coming out soon, so will be highlighting any sumo sets mentioned there.  Thanks!

This is a set I've been working on now for a few months.  Around 60 airports from around the United States and Canada are participating in this promotion of handing out free cards to travelers. If you look at the airports (www.airporttradingcards.com) they are scattered across the countries and some pretty obscure airport making this set extremely difficult to complete.  So far I have 13 total (12 different since STL issued two different ones each year of the promotion).  If anyone lives near any one of these airports I'd be forever grateful if you could pick one up for me!  The following are the ones I have...including ATL.