Bam-Bam & Tuffy Mailday: This Card Is Cool Edition

     I'd been out of town all week for work and was anticipating some exciting mail when I got home.  In what has become one of my favorite online trading experiences, with RyanG of This Card Is Cool, I send him semi-random junk for his type-card collection, and he sends me stacks of pure Japanese awesomeness!  He included a brief note:

     Very eager: check!  Update want lists: check!

     It is increasingly difficult to find new cards to add to my Sir Hensley Meulens collection.  Before these new additions, my Meulens want list was down to just seven cards (of which, one may not exist).  Now it is down to five (or maybe four for existential reasons).

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners 2 Deep Impact Silver Signature #42 /100

  

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners 2 Deep Impact Red Signature #42 /30

  

     Feels kind of awesome to own a Hensley Meulens card numbered to just 30.  If I can track down the gold signature (numbered to 50), I'll have the whole rainbow for this set.  Then it's just back to waiting for an affordable copy of his autographed card (numbered to 48) to show up to have the clean sweep of all of Sir Bam-Bam's Japanese cards.

    Ryan also sent some major additions to my Tuffy Rhodes collection, which has been a touch stagnant in the past year.  Well this is quite the revival.

2002 Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes Team Issue
     I had discovered something like a half dozen team issued cards of Tuffy with the Buffaloes, but this beauty was not one of them.  I love how these keep turning up and I super love that Ryan found one for me!  2002 is a guess on my part, but all of the 2003 cards I have seen actually say 2003 on them.  Could be 2000 or 2001, but I'm sticking with 2002 until proven wrong.

  

2003 DyDo Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes Team Issue w/Norihiro Nakamura
    Yet another team/sponsor issued card of which I was completely unaware.  Tuffy shares the card with fellow B's slugger Norihiro Nakamura.  It would appear this was given out during a two game series vs. Hanshin on 22-23 March 2003.

  

2008 Lotte Bikkuriman Pro Baseball Seals #17

  

    I've been trying to pick up this little foil beauty since it was issued.  Each year, Lotte issues their Bikkuriman Seals (stickers) with little chocolate wafers.  Usually they are anime-type characters, but a few times they issued baseball sets.  I think 2008 was actually the last time they issued a baseball-themed set featuring actual players. These are 2" x 2" squares.  I find it curious that while Japan, like most of the rest of the civilized world, uses the metric system, cards and stickers are still created using firmly standard measurements.

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners 2 Deep Impact Title Holder Pink TH8 #/100

 

     Looks more purple in the scan, but the decorative trim is actually pink.  In the typical modern parallel overkill, there are four versions of this card, an unnumbered version with ugly gold(?) trim and parallels with trim in pink (/100), green (/50) and blue (/30).  I still need the green and blue.

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #087

  

     It is something of a mixed blessing to collect such a big star in Japan.  On the one hand, it means he keeps getting new cards almost every year (but in no where near the quantities of, say, Dave Winfield), but it also means a lot of his cards can be pricy and out of reach for someone as cheap as me.  BBM is very big on anniversaries, and they seem to issue a set for every single anniversary that rolls around, be it league anniversaries, team anniversaries, event anniversaries or even its own company anniversaries.  This set commemorate's BBM's 25th anniversary issuing baseball cards.  Similar to the early Stadium Club sets from Topps, each card features the players' first BBM card on the reverse.

    Now on to the two new highlights of my entire Tuffy Rhodes collection:

2008 BBM Orix Buffaloes Memorabilia #BsM4 /300

  

2009 BBM Touch The Game Memorabilia #M02 /200

      Yes, indeed, these are my first two actual Tuffy memorabilia cards featuring actual pieces of bat in the actual card!  No non-game used shenanigans here, I can practically smell the home runs hit with these tiny chips of wood.  It's not that Tuffy's game used cards are really all that expensive, but I can just never find a single seller on Yahoo! Auctions Japan that is selling more than one at a time.  Pile on Kuboten fees, and I'd be paying an extra $12-15 per card on top of the actual sale price.  I just can't justify $25-50 for a single card.  But thanks to Ryan, I didn't have to.   Many, many thanks, Ryan!  These cards are not just cool, these cards are awesome!