As a parent, you always want your child to do better and be more successful than you.  There is something about parental pride that pushes us to raise kids this way.  One successful sumo wrestling family is that of the Hayao father-son duo. The elder Hayao, competing under the name Tochiazuma, had a very productive 16-year career making it to the 3rd-highest rank of Sekiwake in 1970.  In 1976, his son was born and subsequently entered sumo wrestling in 1994 at the age of 18.  How did the younger Hayao/Tochiazuma do?   He made it to sumo wrestling's 2nd-highest rank of Ozeki and won three championships over 22 years of competing....far surpassing his father's successes.  In 2018, BBM issued their annual multi-sport set titled "Infinity" which focuses on families and family ties.  In fact, their family-themed subset is called "Family Ties" and card #99 captured the Tochiazuma father/son duo.  I recently opened a box of these on my YouTube channel and overcame the odds to get the younger Tochiazuma's Autographed Card!  My father and mother would be proud.....

Let's face it...there needs to be more curling card sets produced.  This sport seem to be gaining more and more popularity each and every Olympics.  I remember that before the 1998 Nagano Olympics the majority of people had never heard of curling (me included).  After it was first televised that year, it became almost an instant hit and each and every Olympics it is one sport I really look forward to watching.  The Japanese team is ranked in the Top 10 worldwide in both men's and women's curling, but are not favored to medal in the Olympics this year.  Regardless, they have a pretty solid team.  The Japanese did not do an Olympic set this year, but they did manage to capture the Japanese Olympic team in the 2017 BBM Infinity Set.  Sadly, I don't have all the 10 curling cards in the set, but here are the six that I do have.

#80: Yusuke Morozumi - not shown
#81: Tetsuro Shimizu
#82: Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi
#83: Kosuke Morozumi
#84: Kosuke Hirata
#85: Satsuki Fujisawa - not shown
#86: Chinami Yoshida
#87: Yumi Suzuki - not shown
#88: Yurika Yoshida
#89: Mari Motohashi - not shown

This is the last post on my 2017 Japanese BBM Infinity Box Break.  You can see the results of my first and second box breaks by clicking on the links.  This part will only be 4 packs long.  One unopnened pack is going to fellow BBM sumo enthusiast Paul for his unopened box collection and another unopened pack is going to longtime blog reader Fuji for his Japanese collection.

Pack 15: Starting off to bat...pun intended...is an 80% baseball pack including another Brilliant Athlete.  Some old school soccer in here as well.


Pack 16: Starting to see more and more doubles!



Pack 18:  Back to back Onokuni, but I nailed an Ohtani baseball card!

Overall impressions:  I like this set and I really like the variety of athletes they used.  Baseball tends to dominate and it did in this set as well.  Also, who can complain about on-card autos??!!  The athlete actually touched the card as they were writing on it.  Way to go BBM.  Although I can't say all the autos are on card.  My two biggest complaints are the lack of imagination on the front and back images (they are the same).  This has been my biggest complaint of BBM in recent years.  Also, the production quality is subpar.  I felt like a good majority of my cards did not look mint coming right out of the box.  There were corner dings as well as bubbles in the surface of some cards.  Baseball fans might be justified in buying a box, but it is quite an investment for fans of other sports as you only get a sprinkling of cards.

This is a continuation of my first thread where I opened 7 packs.  Here are the next 7 packs.  Let's hope I can get some more base sumo cards.

Pack 8:  Some freestyle skiing love in this pack.  I might be entering the double realm soon.

Pack 9:  Curling and Badminton and my second Brilliant Athlete insert card.
Pack 10: Gotta love Bodybuilding cards.

Pack 11:  Boom!  I hit the auto card (Rugby Player Kiyoshi Imaizumi) in this box!  It is #1/60 and an actual on-card auto...no sticker!

Pack 12:  Starting to see some doubles....


Pack 13:  Nailed another base sumo....Kaio!

Pack 14: Another Brilliant Athlete badminton insert card.  Must be a badminton hot box!!!

Definitely a great 7 packs.  I'll open up the last packs in the next few days.

BBM just released another multi-sport set called Infinity.  For those that bought the Masterpiece set last year, Infinity falls right in line with that.  This set has mostly baseball players (42) along with a variety of other sports including Curling, Speed Skating, Ice Hockey, Pro Wrestling, Tennis, and Badminton to name a few.  Some of the players are still active while others have been retired for a while.  Most importantly for this blog are the 5 sumo wrestlers that are included in the base set along with a few sprinkled in insert sets.  This is an All-Japanese set so you likely won't find many names that you recognize unless you follow a particular Japanese sport.  There are 112 cards in the Base Set along with 4 Insert Sets: a 9-card All the Glory set, a 9-card One and Only set, an 18-card Brilliant Athlete set, and a large autograph set.  I believe the Brilliant Athlete set also has foil-stamped facsimile parallels in it.  Likewise, the One and Only set has holographic parallels #ed to 50.

I bought two of these boxes off of Rakuten and I am going to rip one here and keep the other one for a rainy day.  Packs come 20 per box with 5 cards per pack.  Let's keep fingers crossed for some sumo cards!

Pack 1:  Pro Wrestler Masakatsu Funaki and Horse Jockey Yutaka take make their debut.

Pack 2: A Baseball Heavy Pack
Pack 3: Boom, my first sumo card....the cropping on this card is a little weird though

Pack 4:  An eclectic pack for sure and I snagged a Brilliant Athlete insert...Naoko Takahashi.  Awesome to see a female hockey player too.
Pack 5: Another sumo wrestler...Kisenosato.  This is a Speed-Skating heavy pack.
Pack 6:  Some old school images here and another speed skater.
Pack 7:  MMA, Curling, and Baseball all in the same pack!  I love this set.
I'll bust another 7 packs and post in the next few days.  Until then...enjoy!