Checklist Translations: 1996/97 ProCard Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) Series One

     While this set covers the 1996 season, and shows 1996 on the front, it was actually released in early 1997.  Roughly 25,000 boxes were produced with 36 packs per box and 10 cards per pack.  Of the two sets issued by the main manufacturer in 1997, this was the cheaper set.  The set consists of 258 cards.  The set is broken down as follows:

001-175 cover the base cards for each team
176-181 are the team logo cards
182-187 are the Team MVPs (limited to 5000)
188 is a redemption card for a gold version of the MVP of the Year (limited to 5000)
190-211 are the various statistical highlights and record breakers for 1996 (limited to 6000)
212-220 are the 1996 statistical leaders
223-229 are the die-cut Golden Glove Award winners
230-238 are the Best Nine selections (limited to 10,000)
239-246 are acetate cards of the monthly MVP award winners (limited to 10,000)
247-258 cover post season champs, CPBL HR milestones and the big yearly awards (mostly limited to 10,000)

     There was also an insert set, limited to 999 cards, covering the nine league leaders (effectively the same players as cards 212-220).  These have the look of a commemorative stamp, with a perforated color photo in the center of the card.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27942109

The league leader and award winner subsets are shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41480276

The die-cut Golden Glove Award cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41827165

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814906

The standard base card front and back:

Pascual Perez

Sheng-Feng Tsai

Checklist Translations: 1995 A-Plus Card Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL)

     [Intro paragraph coming soon]  While this set covers the 1995 season it was actually released in March of 1996.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27785920

The annual award and league leader cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41452379

The Gold Glove cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41808883

The base cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814900

The standard base card front and back:

Checklist Translations: 1994 Chinese Professional Baseball League (in progress)

     For the 1994 set, the CPBL expanded their flagship set to 506 cards issued in two series.  The first 176 cards covered the individual players, organized by team. Cards 177-182 were the team checklists  All of the cards from 183-235 are serial numbered on the back, in quantities that one would assume were limited in 1994 (though even for Taiwan, the numbers see high, given the likely population of collectors in Taiwan in 1994).  Cards 183-188 were team logo holograms; 189-197 covered the 1994 Gold Glove winners; 198-206 was the Best 9 subset, which is meant to depict the best all-around player for each position in the league (an award that seems common in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, but not in the US).  The usual annual awards and league leaders are covered by cards 207-217; they feature a color photo of the player against a holographic background.  Cards 218-220 represent home run milestones during the 1994 season.  221-224 cover the main season awards (Manager of the Year, ROY, MVP, Most Improved).  Cards 225-232 cover the Monthly MVPs selected over the course of the 1994 season.  These would be analogous to the MLB Player of the Month awards.  Cards 233-235 depict the top team from the season's first half, second half and over all champion...which ended up being the Brother Elephants in all three cases.  The next 270 cards, from 236-505 represent the winning RBI for each game of the 1994 season.  The last card of the set, #506, is for Wu Fu-Lien, but I'm not really sure what the significance is.  In any case, the 1994 set represented a substantial increase in cards over previous years.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27540320

The award winner/league leader subset can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41424839

The Gold Glove subset can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41791036

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814886

The standard base card front and back:

1989 Topps/LJN Baseball Talk series

    In the late 1980s and early 1990s, companies were trying all kinds of ideas to draw in more customers.  About that time, LJN was a company fairly well known for electronic toys and video games.  For 1989, LJN teamed with Topps to produce this set of talking baseball cards.  Each oversized card featured a recording in the form of what amounted to a miniature vinyl record attached to the back.  Rather than go into any further detail, feel free to peruse the Wikipedia entry on the set and player.