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Card Of The Week May 20

NPB Card Guy — Mon, 21 May 2012 00:52:00 +0000

1973 Calbee card (#38) of Shozo Doi and Yokinobu Kuroe

2012 Calbee Series Two

NPB Card Guy — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:55:00 +0000

Calbee put information on their website today regarding this year's Series Two set. There will be 72 "regular" player cards (6 per team) that are numbered 74-145 (continuing the numbering from Series One). There will also be three subsets - Opening Pitchers (OP) featuring the Opening Day pitcher for each team; Memorial Cards (M) featuring reprints of classic Calbee cards as part of their celebration of their 40th Anniversary (numbered 14-25 in continuation of the Series One subset); and the Checklist cards (C) which are also a continuation of the Series One subset (numbered 5-8). There's also an insert set of 24 Star cards (S), two players per team. (Once again, this is a continuation of the Series One insert set.) The cards will be out around June 11.

In other news, while there's no new sets listed on BBM's website, AmiAmi is showing listings for this year's team sets for the Tigers, Baystars and Lions, a box set for Hiroyuki Nakajima and the 2012 Dancing Heroine (Cheerleader) set.

Card Of The Week May 13

NPB Card Guy — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:39:00 +0000

Friday night's 3-2 victory by the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles over Orix was the 1000th win in Senichi Hoshino's managerial career. He's the 12th manager in Japan to make it to 1000 wins and the first former pitcher. He's been managing off and on since 1987 - two stints with the Dragons (87-91 and 96-01), one with the Tigers (02-03) and his current gig with the Eagles since last year - not to mention his time spent managing the 2008 Olympic team. Here's his 1991 BBM card (#44) from his first tenure with Chunichi:

Shinya Miyamoto

NPB Card Guy — Sat, 12 May 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Running late on this, but last week Shinya Miyamoto of the Swallows got career hit number 2000. Miyamoto and Atsunori Inaba, the other player to reach 2000 hits this season (so far but Hiroki Kokobu of the Hawks is getting close as well), both started their careers with the Swallows in 1995 (Miyamoto was the Yakult's second round pick in the 1995 draft; Inaba was the third round pick). They are only the second pair of rookie teammates to go on to get 2000 hits in their careers - the first set being Yutaka Fukumoto and Hideji Kato, who both debuted with the 1969 Hankyu Braves. Not only are they the first set of rookie teammates to get their 2000th hit in the same season, but they actually got it in the same number of games - 1976.

Like Inaba, Miyamoto's rookie card is in the 1995 BBM set (#553, one before Inaba's) and as was the case for Inaba, I don't have the card. He did appear in the 1995 BBM Nippon Series set (#S17):

Here's a selection of Miyamoto cards from the last 15 years or so:

1997 BBM #192

1999 Future Bee #008

2002 BBM 1st Version #408

2003 BBM Japan National Team #17

2005 BBM Swallows #S63

2007 BBM All Stars #A59

2012 Calbee #046

So who was the first round pick in the 1995 draft for the Swallows? A pitcher named Tetsuya Kitagawa, who was drafted out of the industrial leagues (Nissan Motors), appeared in 36 games with Yakult between 1995 and 1998 and then returned to the industrial leagues.

RIP Noburu Inoue

NPB Card Guy — Sat, 12 May 2012 02:09:00 +0000

Former Dragon and Hawk infielder Noburo Inoue passed away last week. Inoue played for Chunichi from 1953 to 1961, for the Hawks from 1962 to 1966 and returned to the Dragons for a final season in 1967. I'm sure Inoue has a number of menko and bromide cards from the 1950's and 60's, but all I have of him are his cards from the two BBM Dragons Anniversary sets - the 2006 70th Anniversary set (#22) and the 2011 75th Anniversary set (#16):

Card Of The Week May 6

NPB Card Guy — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Masahiro Yamamoto got the win in the Dragon's 1-0 victory over the Baystars last Monday. This was win #212 for his career, passing Hall Of Famer Shigeru Sugishita for most in Dragon's history. Here's his 2009 Calbee card (#080):

Prestige Collectibles Auction

NPB Card Guy — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:15:00 +0000

Been meaning to mention this since it started last week - there's a new Prestige Collectibles Auction going on until May 15. Details are here.

One really cool item up for auction is a 1962 menko card of Larry Doby, when he played for Chunichi. The auction description is incorrect when it says that Doby is the only US Hall Of Famer to have played in Japan as Rich Gossage played for the Hawks in 1990. However, Gossage didn't have any cards, so Doby's the only one you can get a Japanese card of.

More new 2012 BBM team sets

NPB Card Guy — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Over the last couple weeks, BBM has announced this year's editions of the Carp, Giants and Marines team sets. The Carp set has 109 base cards (including apparently one for Kenta Maeda's no hitter on April 6), a nine card insert set (Soul Of CARP) and various autograph and jersey cards (looks like for Kenta Meada and Yuya Fukui, including cards with autographs or jerseys for both). The Giants set is a whopping 127 cards with (I think) two nine card insert sets (Young Giants and Super Metallic Giants) and memorabilia cards featuring up to four player's jerseys. The Marines set has 99 base cards, a nine card insert set (Counterattack Of Marines?) and memorabilia and autograph cards (the memorabilia cards have jerseys of Yoshihisa Naruse and Yuki Karakawa - one each by themselves and one with both).

There's no release date listed for the Carp set. The Marines set will be out in mid-May and the Giants set will be out in late-May.

In addition, BBM is releasing a box set to commemorate the Baystars being bought by DeNA. Called "Reborn", the set will contain 28 cards - 27 cards for players (and manager Kiyoshi Nakahata) and one "special" card. The "special" card will either be one of 12 "Newcomer 4 Hometown" insert cards or one of 10 possible memorabilia cards featuring jersey, bat or patch pieces from up to three players. The set will be released in mid-May.

Card Of The Week April 29

NPB Card Guy — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

So it looks like Atsunori Inaba wasted no time in getting hit #2000 - he did it in his first at bat in yesterday's game against the Eagles:

Looking at the list of milestones on the Yakyu Baka page I linked above, I'm amused to see that he got hit #1500 back in 2008 in his 1500th game played. I always love symmetry. Here's yet another Inaba card - his "Power Of Veteran" subset card from the 2008 BBM 2nd Version set (#734):

NST

NPB Card Guy — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:36:00 +0000

After Yamakatsu and Nippon Ham, the other big card manufacturer of the late 1970's (besides Calbee of course) was NST. Between 1975 and 1983, NST produced four large sets of 2 inch by 2 7/8 inch cards. Technically I guess the cards are really stamps as they were intended to be pasted into albums that (I assume) were sold in conjunction with the packs of cards. At least two of the sets had a parallel set of thicker stock cards also. The sets were very Giants-centric - the last two featured only Giants players. The fronts of the cards in all four sets are "pure card" - white border photos with no text whatsoever.

The first NST set was issued in 1975 to honor Shigeo Nagashima, who retired at the end of the 1975 season. It was a 288 card set called "Mr. Baseball". The set contains many cards highlighting Nagashima's career (including a bunch of Shukan Baseball Magazine covers) - in many ways this was the model for the set Mr. Giants set BBM produced in 1999 to commemorate Nagashima's career. The remainder of the set contains mostly other Giants players, but there are some players from other teams. The real highlight of the set is a handful of cards showing major league players with the Giants - there's a couple cards with Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson during the 1971 Orioles tour of Japan, a card showing Nagashima with Gene Mauch and a card with Tsuneo Horiuch and Ron Cey (unfortunately I have none of these). The backs of all the cards were identical except for the card number. There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards which were blank backed. Here's a couple examples:

Shigeo Nagashima #1

Koichi Tabuchi #66

Back Of Tabuchi's card

Wrapper

NST issued a 388 card set (also called "Mr. Baseball") in 1976. Again, the cards are mostly Giants players although there appears to be a pretty good selection of players from other teams. To some extent, the set was intended to honor Sadaharu Oh as there is a small subset dedicated to his records, although nothing like the amount of cards dedicated to Nagashima in the previous set. The highlight of the set, however, is a card featuring Sadaharu Oh and Henry Aaron - the picture was probably taken when Aaron and Oh had a home run hitting contest in 1974. Like the 1975 set, the backs of all the cards in the set were identical except for the card number - in fact I think the only real difference between the backs in the two sets is that the backs of this set were blue (despite my scanner deciding to scan it in black and white) - the text appears to be the same. Here's a few cards:

Keishi Suzuki #4

Takashi Nishimoto #294

Back Of Nishimoto's card

Wrapper

After a hiatus of a year, NST issued a 264 card set in 1978 that was exclusively for the Giants. Not only did they show the Giants on the field, there were a great many card showing the players off the field, both training in uniform and relaxing or traveling in street clothes. The set also features cards of OB Giants players such as Victor Starffin and Eiji Sawamura (I think this is the first ever card of Sawamura but I could be wrong). There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards that had "menko-like" backs showing a dice and a rock-paper-scissors symbol. The backs of the regular cards were again very similar to the two previous sets - it looks like there's a difference in the last line of text. Here's a couple examples:

Tadashi Matsumoto #169

Tadao Okada #263

Back of Matsumoto card

Giants Training #160

Shigeru Takada disembarking #50 (I think)

Back of parallel card

Wrapper

NST's final set with 288 cards was released in 1983 and it also is completely dedicated to the Yomiuri Giants. I don't have any cards from this set, so I can't say too much about it. It appears from Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" that the backs were a different format than the earlier sets although it is not clear if they are identical except for card number in the set itself.