There's been a lot of discussion on-line this past week about an error on the back of Hiromi Itoh's card in the new 2024 Calbee Series One set.  Itoh's height is listed as 176 meters (577-ish feet) rather than 176 centimeters (around 5 foot, 10 inches).  Calbee has issued an apology and is offering to exchange the card for a corrected version "at a later date".   While the error is amusing (Gaijin Baseball on Twitter dubbed it "Kaiju Itoh"), I've been somewhat surprised to see people trying to sell the card for inflated prices on Yahoo! Japan Auctions.  I mean, sure, i ..read more

I wanted to do a quick post about some cards I got in the mail today from my friend Jason.  He'd put a couple interesting memorabilia and autograph cards up on Ebay that I picked up and as usual he threw in a bunch of random cards in the package with what I had bought. First up are the afore mentioned memorabilia and autograph cards: 2022 BBM Genesis /300 2022 BBM Genesis /350 2023 BBM Genesis /200 2023 Epoch Premier Edition #AA-15 /97 The only other card I know was going to be in the package was this 2022 BBM Genesis card of Keita Nakagawa.  ..read more

I wanted to do a follow up post about the Topps Now NPB cards I wrote about the other day along with some other Topps Now related news: - I had asked mr friend Ryan to pick up one of the Topps Now NPB cards - Natsuki Takeuchi - for me.  He was willing to do it but pointed out that not only did the card cost 1243 yen but there was a 550 yen shipping fee as well!  I told him the webpage for the card said there was "free economy shipping".  He said, yeah, it says that but when he went to check out, it told him shipping was 550 yen for a total of almost 1800 yen.  We deci ..read more

You know, I make fun of Calbee for issuing pretty much the same flagship set year after year.  I should probably make fun of BBM more for doing essentially the same thing with the Rookie Edition set every year. Rookie Edition is BBM's annual draft pick set, featuring all the players who were taken in the NPB draft last fall.  Or to be more accurate - all the players who were taken in the draft and came to terms.  It should probably go without saying that if the player didn't sign with the team that drafted him, he's not in the set.  It's a lot less common for an NPB draftee ..read more

I did a post a few weeks back about a bunch of magazine issued cards that I'd gotten from Ryan.  I mentioned in the post that I had nearly completed my goal of getting all the baseball related cards that were issued by BBM in Sports Card Magazine (SCM).  In a comment to that post, Sean asked how many cards were actually issued in the magazine over the years.  The answer is 467 over the slightly more than 20 year run (October 1996 to January 2017) that the magazine was published - I have a list of all the cards here. Sean's question prompted me to do a little more research thoug ..read more

I got a handful of cards from my friend Jason early last week and one of the cards he threw in was kind of interesting.  It's a 2023 Topps 206 card of Yuki Yanagita (#188) and it's somehow a three-way parallel!  It's a mini card, it has an alternate image (i.e. not a mugshot) and it has the rabbits on it (which makes it a numbered parallel to boot as it's /99).  I know that Topps' has some crazy parallels but I didn't know that one card could be part of three of them.  Here's the front and back of the card: I wonder if there's a version of this card with a colored bord ..read more

I frequently say that I don't collect MLB cards but that actually not completely true.  I've put together a small collection of certified autographed MLB cards of Japanese players.  Now, as I've also frequently mentioned, I'm cheap so I'm not going after Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro, Hideki Matsui or even Daisuke Matsuzaka.  Instead I've been concentrating on guys who had stellar NPB careers both before and after their perhaps less-than-stellar MLB stints.  It's probably just easier to show you what I mean: 2004 Bowman Chrome Shingo Takatsu 2005 Skybox Autographics ..read more

A while back I noticed something interesting about this card of Takamasa Sukuki from the 1978 Yamakatsu JY10 set: Do you see it?  The batter is a member of the Nippon-Ham Fighters.  Since NPB didn't have interleague play until 2005, almost 30 years after this card came out, the photo was most likely taken during a pre-season exhibition game.  It COULD have been from an All Star game as well but I think it's unlikely - there's a Dragons' outfielder in the background and a quick look at the All Star game rosters from 1977 and 1978 reveals that there were no Dragons outfield ..read more

A ..read more

A ..read more