2000 Epoch Pro Baseball box break (pack 16)

Interesting here as both a puzzle piece AND a Star Player sticker turn up!



Satoru Kanemura
Hisanori Takahashi
Katsumi Yamashita
Tomohito Itoh
Atsuya Furuta
Kazuhisa Ishii puzzle piece (who, according to Gary Engle, was the real prize of the puzzle piece inserts).

Doubles T. Iguchi, Kitoh, Takatsu, Wakatabe

So 16 packs in, out of 160 possible different stickers, the set stands at:

103/204 base stickers

13/108 puzzle pieces

0/24 Leading Players

2/12 Star Players

118 unique cards, 42 doubles

I think those are actually pretty decent numbers. Just over half way thru the box, and the base set is just over half complete. The inserts are a little more disappointing, but that's life with inserts. This was before the days of the card companies being masochistic enough to actually guarantee "hits" per box, which did drive up sales of high-end product, but also led to incessant whining among collectors who felt robbed when the only got a box full of base cards of Ichiro, Pujols, Griffey, Dice-K, etc, and didn't get their guaranteed GU card (which probably would have been David Wells or Omar Vizquel anyway).

2000 Epoch Pro Baseball stickers box break (pack 15)

Halfway through the break, and there are more doubles than new cards. Perhaps that's offset by getting another glittery Star Player sticker, this time of Yukio Tanaka de los Marines Fighters (I guess I should pay more attention!  My apologies to Fighters fans everywhere!). And Atsuya Furuta was no slouch, either as the star catcher of the Swallows for some 15 years. He even played on the 1988 Japanese Olympic team.




Doubles: Takahashi, Obando, Neel, Kuji, Mutoh, Atsushi Kataoka puzzle piece