1990 Columbus Clippers Team Issue Perforated Stadium Giveaway

      As a follow up to this post, I was finally able to acquire a copy of the full 1990 Columbus Clippers set that was given away at Cooper Stadium in 1990 as a single perforated sheet.  Sponsored by Kodak and the local Nickles Bakery, the set was topped with a team photo and included 25 cards.  At the bottom of the sheet are two coupons, one for a "free" watch (with 8 proofs of purchase from Kodak film) and one to save $20 on photofinishing with purchase of a 35mm Kodak camera.

     Here is the checklist, organized by uniform number (not necessarily how they are arranged in the uncut set):

NA Team Photo
2 Mark Wasinger
4 Jim Walewander
9 Oscar Azocar
13 Bob Davidson
14 Jim Leyritz
16 Dave Sax
18 Andy Stankiewicz
21 John Fishel
22 Stump Merrill MGR
23 Darrin Chapin
24 John Habyan
25 Dave Eiland
26 Jason Maas
27 Mark Leiter
28 Kevni Mmahat
29 Van Snider
30 Rich Monteleone
31 Hensley Meulens
34 Brian Dorsett
35 Steve Adkins
37 Kevin Maas
38 Rob Sepanek

40 Jimmy Jones
44 Clay Parker
NNO Clete Boyer / Stump Merrill / Ken Rowe / Trey Hillman / Mike Heifferon (Coaching Staff)

     Currently, this set is not cataloged by Beckett (though I did recently send them the set information), but is is cataloged by the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.  I've also posted the checklist to SportsCardForum.com, Zistle.com and TradingCardDB.com.  The three copies I received from a seller on eBay all had a fairly significant bit of corner damage to the cards on the corners of the set when it was folded.  Most of that looks to be old wear, and not a result of shipping.  I guess people weren't so keen to take care of minor league sets of this nature as they might have been for the similar Lykes-sponsored Atlanta Braves sets that were issued in the 1990s.  As a result, finding copy of the set in mint condition is unlikely.

1994 Tucson Toros Jones Photo set confirmed

     Bit by bit, evidence of these sets continues to surface.  Above are photos from the previously unconfirmed 1994 Tucson Toros Jones Photo set.  Big thanks to Joshua Raisen who runs the wonderful Astroland website for this information.  He picked up this "pack" of 5 photos on eBay recently, complete with the vinyl envelope in which they were issued.

So far, the only known players are the following (updated as necessary):

John Hudek

Domingo Jean

Frank Kellner

Mark Petkovsek

Scooter Tucker

    As these were usually issued in bundles of five, I expect there are at least 15 more photos in the 1994 set.  Whenever more photos turn up, the list will be updated.

Hensley "Bam Bam" Meulens Want List

ヘンスリー・ミューレンス

    This will likely always be a very small, very obscure list.  Any help in tracking down these cards would be greatly appreciated.

1991 Carvel Yankees Juniors Team Photo

1992 Pinnacle/Score panel

2010 Upper Deck 1990 20th Anniversary Buy Back
     A few sets of these cards were apparently back-doored from Upper Deck, and have made their way into the secondary market.  So far, I only know of a single person who has them, but he hasn't sold any in awhile.  These are just 1990 Upper Deck cards with the same 20th Anniversary stamp that was used on the 1989 buy back cards in 2009.

2011-12 San Francisco Giants Team Issue photo card
     These are the cards that are only given away at Giants Fan Fest events at AT&T Park.  They are blank backed, feature black & white photography and are slightly taller than a standard baseball card.  They are most commonly found signed.  I would prefer a non-signed copy, but will take what I can get.  At the moment, I'm offering $25 shipped for this card (signed or unsigned).

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners 2 Deep Impact Autographed  /48


2013 Leaf Pride of the Pinstripe /4


2016-2017 San Francisco Giants Team Issue photo card

     Only guessing at the existence of this card.  It would be 2.5"x4", black and white, blank-backed, and the player name and team banner would not extend beyond the logo circle.

Checklist Translations: 1995 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) Sticker Collection

     For several different seasons, sticker sets were issued for the Korea Baseball Organization.  I've found evidence for sets from 1983, 1995, 1996 and 1998.  I suspect there are more out there to be found.  I have no idea how these were originally distributed and I have yet to find anything resembling a pack.  For that matter, I haven't found any images of the stickers not already stuck in an album.  What I have determined is that there are 96 total stickers in this set from 1995, with 12 stickers per team.  Each team's section in the album starts with a cartoon logo sticker, usually followed by the manager and then the 10 most prominent players.  As seen in the images below, each sticker has a white border and features the players position and name at the bottom of the image.

1977 San Diego Padres Schedule Cards - Winfield Achievement Accomplished!

    In 1977, the San Diego Padres issued a "set" of 89 92 unnumbered cards featuring players and both on-field and off-field team personnel. All of the cards measured 2.25" x 3.375" and featured sepia tone photos with brown text on the front.  Neither Beckett nor the Standard Catalog make any reference to how these were distributed but, by their nature as schedule cards, I suspect they were handed out at Jack Murphy Stadium or just available at the ticket office for free.  The card lists below are based on the cards I have in-hand and contradict the Standard Catalog in some places.  Contrary to the variations alluded to by the SCBC, I have found no evidence of any individual player photos existing with multiple backs.

1994 Chiba Lotte Marines Menko (JCM 25)

     Back around 2008 or 2009, I decided to seriously pick up the slack in my Hensley Meulens collection, and I started exploring the world of baseball outside North America.  I learned that Meulens had played in Japan for a few years, and upon discovering Robert Fitts' website, learned that he also had several Japanese baseball cards.  I emailed Mr. Fitts and as I had exhausted his supply of different Meulens cards, he suggested I look into purchasing a copy of Gary Engel's Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide, 6th edition, so that I could become more familiar with the hobby and get a better idea of what was out there.

      I ordered the 6th edition (about 2 months before the 7th edition was due to drop, but I didn't want to wait that long) and I found that Hensley Meulens had 9 cards from Japan over three years with the Marines and Swallows.  About 6 months after that, while more methodically browsing through the book, I ran across the 10th card of Hensley Meulens from Japan.  This one was right up my alley.  Not only was it a Japanese card, but it was Japanese ODDBALL card!  From my years of chasing cards for my Winfield and Williams collections, I loved finding oddballs.

Checklist Translations: 2007 TSC Sinon Bulls

More details to come.

Checklist Translations: 2007 CPBL 18th Chinese Professional Baseball League

     I'm skipping ahead a bit because I ran across this checklist poster for the official 2008 2007 CPBL set (I recently realized this set was the 2007 set.  Apparently there was no full league set for 2008, so there is a gap before the league launched the Player of the Year set in 2009).  Being a graphic, the checklist was a little tougher to compile as I had to do all the translations by sight and comparisons, rather than getting to use any existing text-based resource.  Still, I've been able to work out names for almost everything except some of the players from the "Rookies" subset.  The new album site I found enabled the completion of the checklist. 

      The CPBL issued 3,600 boxes, each containing 24 packs of 6 cards each.  The CPBL had worked out a partnership with the 7-ELEVEn chain of stores for exclusive distribution.  The set is comprised of 395 base cards.  Cards 001-223 contain the main player cards, organized by team.  Cards 223-229 are dedicated to team photos, 230-253 cover new rookies for the 2007 season, 254-267 cover the 2007 statistical leaders and award winners.

      Cards 268-277 depict the 2007 Best Ten.  The Best Ten, similar to the Best Nine in Nippon Pro Baseball, covers the top players for each position, but the CPBL also includes an award for the designated hitter, as well.  I'm not sure why this isn't done in MLB.  MLB has the Silver Slugger, but that's just for the best hitters at each position, and neither the CPBL nor NPB has an equivilent award strictly for offense.

     After the Best Ten, cards 278-286 depict the 2007 Golden Glove winners for each fielding position.  Monthly MVP award winners are cards 287-302.  The next six cards (303-308) are dedicated to the post season teams and award winners.  A variety of season highlights, awards and milestones are described on cards 309-333.  Three major offensive records were set in the 2007 season; Tilson Brito set the new mark for home runs in a single season with 33 and there is a card for each home run.  Kuo-Ching Kao set the single season record for hits with 152 and gets his own 17 card subset to document the feat.  The last 12 cards of the base set are dedicated to Tilson Brito's breaking the single-season record for runs batted in with 107.

     Randomly inserted into packs were a variety of autographed and memorabilia sets including a 7-card single autograph set, 13-card dual-autograph set, 6-card authentic game worn jersey set and a 14-card set of autographed cards dedicated to the Chinese Taipei National Baseball Team.

     This was the last set issued by the CPBL that featured Chinese-only text on the card fronts.  Since 2009, the yearly CPBL Player of the Year sets have included the players' names in English on the front of all cards in the sets. 

Checklist Translations: 2006 CPBL 17th Chinese Professional Baseball League

    After the nice return to the baseball card business in 2005, the CPBL followed up that success with this very nice design.  2005 was good, especially after several years of nothing, but in compared to the 2006 set's great photography and excellent use color, the 2005 set, with its hazy, white borders, looks somewhat pale.  Once more, the cards were sold in boxes of 24 packs at 6 cards per pack.  The checklist is arranged in the usual fashion.  The first 194 cards cover the players by team; 204-249 present the rookie crop from 2006; 251-285 covers the records and highlights from the season; 286-299 are the 2006 statistical leaders and award winners; 300-309 show the year's Best Ten selections; 310-318 are the Gold Glove winners; 319-334 cover the monthly MVPs for the season.

    In an interesting approach, cards 341-356 are all autographs and dual autos with cards 357-368 being game used memorabilia cards.  Rather than make the separate insert sets, they actually made the limited "hit" cards part of the regular checklist, which means there are only 50 total possible complete sets.  The game used cards had patch versions as well, but they were numbered among the total 50 card print run for the memorabilia cards.

     All of the cards in the set, as well as images of the boxes, packs, sell sheets, checklists and all of the cards can be found at my new favorite photo album website:

http://photo.pchome.com.tw/super0825/010/

    Below are scans of the cards from this set that RyanG sent to me, by way of NPBCardGuy, along with the other goodies I've posted about lately.

Base Card Front:

Checklist Translations: 2005 CPBL 16th Chinese Professional Baseball League

     By 2005, more than 10 years had passed since the CPBL had issued its own set of baseball cards (and about 6 years since anyone had issued cards for the CPBL), and the league jumped back into the arena with a fairly nice offering.  The oddly numbered 231-card set was issued in packs of 6 cards, 24 packs per box.  I was extremely fortunate to discover this website (http://mypage.pchome.com.tw/card/super0825), and accompanying photo album site (http://photo.pchome.com.tw/super0825/), that covers almost all of the CPBL sets released since the revival of baseball cards in Taiwan.  As this set represents the 16th season of the CPBL, it is most often listed as CPBL 16.  In fact, most of the sets are now found on auction sites with the season number in the title.

     As with most CPBL sets, it is broken on to several distinct subsets: main player cards, sorted by team; 2005 award winners; golden glove winners, monthly MVPs and rookies for the 2005 season.

Photo Album for 2005 CPBL 16 set:

http://photo.pchome.com.tw/super0825/04/

Base card front and back:

Jui-Chang Chen (front)

Jui-Chang Chen (back)

Checklist Translations: 1991 Lotte Gum Baseball Kings

      Taking a break from the Taiwanese sets, we venture over to South Korea and find this small set for the Korea Baseball Organization from the Lotte Gum company.  In 1991, Lotte Gum (롯데 껌) produced this 50-card "Baseball Kings" (야구 왕) set, featuring 10 cards per team, in packs of 2 cards and a piece of bubble gum for 200 won.  Packs can be found in red/orange, green, blue, purple and yellow.  Oddly some of the packs have images from MLB on the back.

Tiny, Tuffy and Taiwanese Cards: Part IIIa

       When last we left our heroes (NPB Card Guy & Ryan G), what began as a tiny look into the world of cleverly encapsulated pro yakyu goodness had grown into a much Tuffer expedition into a larger world.  Now we rejoin our story, at an earlier jucture when the intrepid Ryan G had ventured solo into the uncharted back alleys of Taichung in search of cardboard curios.  He did a good job detailing his haul in his series of posts, so if you've read those, most of these cards will look familiar.

      Ever a stickler for some semblance of order, I present these in (roughly) chronological order.

1992 Chinese Professional Baseball League

Chong-Long Yo

Bam Bam White Whale Landed!

      We interrupt the regularly scheduled mail day series with breaking news...

OBSCURE JAPANESE HENSLEY MEULENS
WHITE WHALE LANDED!

       My weekly searches on Yahoo! Auctions Japan finally paid off and, with the services of Kuboten.com, I have just won the 1994 Chiba Lotte Marines stadium giveaway menko/karuta set I never thought I'd get. Bam Bam is on the third row, second from the left.  Once it arrives in a few weeks, I'll post a scan of the whole sheet, front and back.

Tiny, Tuffy and Taiwanese Cards: Part II

        Thanks to the greatness that is the Internet, NPB Card Guy went on vacation to Japan and I got souvenirs!  He'd asked me before he left if there was any thing special (aside from the elusive 1994 Chiba Lotte Marines menko set) he could look track down for me, so I just said anything from my Tuffy Rhodes want list.  Well, somewhere in the dozen or so card shops he hit while in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, he and Ryan (from This Card is Cool and Chaos and Kanji) tracked down 13 hits from my list!  Thanks guys!

Tiny, Tuffy and Taiwanese Cards: Part I (and semi-evenly spread thanks)

      A couple of big thanks (of appropriately varying size) to NPB Card Guy of the Japanese Baseball Card Blog and Ryan G of This Card is Cool (among others) for all of the cards you are about to see here (some cards not for use with some sets).  Freshly back from his WBC-watching tour of Japan, the Guru of Eastern Cardboard flung this batch of goodies at me via the USPS.  I'll take them in the order implied in the title and start with The Tiny.

Checklist Translations: 1996/97 ProCard Notable Players (CPBL) Series Two

      Considered the second series of ProCard's 1996/97 effort, 1997 NP (Notable Players) is numbered as its own set and released in June of 1997.  The Notable Players set includes, presumably, the best 15 or so players from each team, 1996 award winners, each pitcher with 10 wins, each hitter with 100 hits, highly touted rookies, and a "key player" from each team.  This set also included a couple of autographs, one limited to 300 cards for Taiwanese pitching legend Yuen-Chih Kuo, better known in Japan as Genji Kaku of the Chunichi Dragons, and the other limited to 500 cards of 1996 CPBL Rookie of the Year (and current all-time CPBL home run leader) Tai-Shan Chang.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28009363


Base card front:

1991 Tucson Toros Jones Photo set confirmed

     Based on the existence of a few other undocumented Jones Photo sets from the 1990s, I had theorized that there were likely Tucson Jones Photo sets issued each year from 1987-1999.  Beckett and SCD had previously catalogued parts of the sets from 1987-1989 and 1998.  I later found photos from the sets for 1993, 1997 and 1999.  This morning, a listing appeared on eBay of a lot of Tucson-related cards and photos (baseball and college basketball) and it included 8 photos from the 1991 set, including a very rare Kenny Lofton.  Here is a cropped version of the image from the listing, focusing on the Toros photos:

Checklist Translations: 1997 Taiwan Major League Power Cards

     So far I've been able to dig up very little information on the nature of this set.  It was issued for the 1997 Taiwan Major League season, and is apparently designed as some sort of card game.  All of the cards have standard poker suits in the upper left corner, as well as menko-style paper, rock, scissors icons in the lower right corner.  Each card has some sort of power value in bold letters under the player name. The main base set is comprised of 180 player cards, and there is also a 36-card, white-bordered insert set that includes 26 game actions and 10 players.

Here are some examples of the base cards:

Sam Horn

Chi-Yueh Li