Checklist Translations: 2004 & 2005 Macoto Cobras Team Sets

     Awhile back, my favorite on-going blog covering the CPBL posted about a couple of team sets produced for the Macoto Cobras.

龍「蛇」雜處的眼鏡蛇－話說誠泰蛇球員卡

     As described on the blog, the 2004 set was issued in a small box and was comprised of 37 cards, 7 coaches, 25 players and 5 unnumbered logo cards.  Below is the checklist as I have been able to assemble thus far.  

Number	Chinese	English	Team	Note
1	黃高俊	Kao-Chun Huang	Macoto Cobras
5	陳保宏	Bao-Hong Chen	Macoto Cobras
8	林義翔	Yi-Hsiang Lin	Macoto Cobras
13	鄧蒔陽	Shih-Yang Teng	Macoto Cobras
15	蔡士勤	Chih-Chin Tsai	Macoto Cobras
16	黃欽智	Chin-Chih Huang	Macoto Cobras
17	李明進	Ming-Chin Li	Macoto Cobras
18	許竹見	Chu-Chien Hsu	Macoto Cobras
19	林英傑	Ying-Chieh Lin	Macoto Cobras
21	許志豪	Zhi-Hao Xu	Macoto Cobras
23	許聖杰	Sheng-Chieh Hsu	Macoto Cobras
24	莊景賀	Ching-Ho Chuang	Macoto Cobras
25	丘昌榮	Chang-Jung Chiu	Macoto Cobras
27	柯良宗	Liang-Tsung Ke	Macoto Cobras
33	豐偌暉	Johui Feng	Macoto Cobras
34	楊騏嘉	Chi-Chia Yang	Macoto Cobras
35	楊睿智	Jui-Chih Yang	Macoto Cobras
41	陳柏勳	Po-Hsun Chen	Macoto Cobras
47	克萊柏	Kleber Ojima	Macoto Cobras
49	鄭景益	Ching-Yi Cheng	Macoto Cobras
50	陳世峰	Shih-Feng Chen	Macoto Cobras
54	吳承翰	Cheng-Han Wu	Macoto Cobras
55	謝佳賢	Chia-Hsien Hsieh	Macoto Cobras
57	汪天祥	Tian-Xiang Wang	Macoto Cobras
91	陳志誠	Chih-Hsing Chen	Macoto Cobras
58	孫昭立	Chao-Li Sun	Macoto Cobras	CO
59	李安熙	An-Hsi Li	Macoto Cobras	CO
66	呂明賜	Ming-Tzu Lu	Macoto Cobras	CO
67	吳復連	Fu-Lien Wu	Macoto Cobras	CO
70	呂文生	Wen-Sheng Liu	Macoto Cobras	CO
75	中本茂樹	Shigeki Nakamoto	Macoto Cobras	CO
88	郭泰源	Tai-Yuan Kuo	Macoto Cobras	MG
NNO		Macoto Cobras Logo	Macoto Cobras
NNO		Macoto Cobras Logo	Macoto Cobras
NNO		Macoto Cobras Logo	Macoto Cobras
NNO		Macoto Cobras Logo	Macoto Cobras
NNO		Macoto Cobras Logo	Macoto Cobras

Clyde's Stale News II

     For the first time ever, Panini is FINALLY issuing a baseball sticker set for a country other than the US or Venezuela.  Panini will be producing a sticker set and album for Liga de Beisbol Dominicano (LIDOM) this season.

Checklist Translations: 2008 TSC Sinon Bulls [In Progress]

      In 2008, for the second year TSC (Taiwan Sports Cards) issued a pack-based set for the Sinon Bulls.  The set featured 108 base cards, facsimile autographed parallels, and the usual smattering of autographs, photo cards and memorabilia cards.  A subset, as card number 109, featured 200 different cards, each limited to 24 copies, dedicated to Tai-Shan Chang's 200 career home runs.  At this point, I think I have everything listed except the photo cards.
   
The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/35643421

The base set, parallels and examples of most of the inserts can be see here:
http://photo.pchome.com.tw/super0825/032/

The standard base card front and back:

Checklist Translations: 1997 ProCard CPBL Baseball Hall of Fame [UPDATED]

    The third and final set issued by ProCard to cover the 1996 season introduced the "chrome" effect to Taiwan.  This shiny 122-card set was released in September 1997, was sold boxes of 24 packs, 6 cards to a pack.  Pack retailed for 150 yuan, which was about $4.50 US.  If I understand what Jack Li says in his blog post about the set, it was a bit too expensive for the market and wasn't terribly popular at the time.  As a result, this can be a fairly tough set to complete.  Interestingly, both Korea and Taiwan have had sets fashioned after Topps Finest or Chrome, but I can't think of a single similar set from Japan.

Checklist Translations: 1990-1992 Chiclets Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL)

     The inaugural season of the CPBL was accompanied by several different sets of baseball cards in various forms.  For the first three years of it's existence, the American Chicle Company (or their Adams subsidiary) produced sets of baseball cards for the CPBL under the Chiclets brand (芝蘭口香糖).  Technically this is a single set, spread across the first three seasons of the CPBL, and is numbered contiguously from 1-400.

     Slight digression - As with most CPBL sets, the cards were actually issued the year following the year they represent, so the 1990 was actually released in 1991  After all, there was no 1989 season, so it would have been very difficult for anyone to acquire all the photos necessary to produce a decent sized 1990 set during the 1990 season and still have it in stores before the year was out.  Today it could probably be done, but remember this was in the days before digital photography.  Aside from some small, team-based sets, this tradition has continued to the present.  Now the official CPBL sets tend to include a reference to the season number in the set names with 1990 being the first.  So the set that will be issued in 2015 will cover then 2014 season and probably have a "CPBL 25th" referenced somewhere.

     Chiclets cards were issued with the well-known candy-coated gum.  The first series of cards had a colorful design that was coordinated with each teams' colors and, as with almost all cards from the region, prominently featured the player's uniform number along with name, team and position.  Foreign players also had their names printed in English on both front and back.  The backs have the card number in the upper left corner, the usual player biographical details and a summary of their 1990 statistics.  The first series includes cards 1-118.  The first 17 cards feature a coloring variation on the back and can be found with both a much lighter border than the rest of the set, being more of a blue-gray as well as the richer blue of the remaining 101 cards.

Checklist Translations: 1998 C&C 1997 Chinese Pro-Baseball (CPBL) [COMPLETE]

    In 1998, Golden International Corp. (國堡國際股份有限公司), was enlisted to produce the yearly cards for CPBL.  The company produced two different sets, C&C and Diamond, that represented different price points in the hobby, similar to how Score issued both Select and Pinnacle or how Fleer issued Ultra and Flair.  Neither set was big on presenting statistics or biographical information, instead focusing on the photography, offering quality color photos on both sides of the card.  The C&C set was the pricier of the two offerings, selling in 1998 for 50 yuan (Taiwan New Dollars), which was roughly $1.60 U.S.  Production was reported at 8,000 boxes of 36 packs each.  Not sure exactly how many cards came per pack, and I have been unable to find any images of the packaging.

     The C&C set consisted of 221 base cards, organized by team in the order of the standings for the 1997 season.  In a move that I'm surprised I've never seen with an American card company, the base checklists for both the C&C and Diamond sets are identical.  The insert sets in the C&C set covered the more standard subjects seen in most CPBL sets, Best 9, Gold Gloves, Monthly MVPs and seasonal Award Winners.  Being the "high-end" set, the C&C inserts all feature some manner of die-cutting.

• All-League Best 9 (9 cards) limited to 5555 cards
• Gold Gloves (9 cards) limited to 5555 cards
• Monthly MVP (8 cards) limited to 3200
• Award Winner (14 cards) limited to 1200

The set is described in this blog post, from which almost all of the information in this post was derived:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28095699

The Award Winner set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41504267

The Best Nine set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41712934

The Gold Glove set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41846662

The standard base card front and back:

Chao-Huang Lin

Checklist Translations: 1998 Diamond 1997 Chinese Pro-Baseball (CPBL) [COMPLETE]

    For 1998, yet another company, Golden International Corp. (國堡國際股份有限公司), was enlisted to produce the yearly cards for CPBL.  Looking at the company's website today, I get the impression that the CPBL was basically price shopping each year, looking for the best deal from whichever printing company they could get, similar to how minor league teams tend to switch between Grandstand, MultiAd/Brandt and Choice Marketing or just printing the sets locally.  As such, until TSC came along, it doesn't seem like there were actually any real "sports card companies" in Taiwan, just marketing companies contracted to produce the sets.

    The company produced two different sets, C&C and Diamond, that represented different price points in the hobby, similar to how Score issued both Select and Pinnacle or how Fleer issued Ultra and Flair.  Neither set was big on presenting statistics or biographical information, instead focusing on the photography, offering quality color photos on both sides of the card.  The Diamond set was the cheaper of the two offerings, selling in 1998 for 30 yuan (Taiwan New Dollars), which was roughly $1 U.S.  Production was reported at 8,000 boxes of 24 packs each.  Not sure exactly how many cards came per pack, and I have been unable to find any images of the packaging.

     The Diamond set consisted of 228 base cards, organized by team in the order of the standings for the 1997 season.  There were two unnumbered checklists covering all of the base and insert cards. The insert sets were all serial numbered and covered the usual subjects:

Hot Rookies (11 cards) limited to 4500 cards
HR Hitters (11 cards) limited to 4500 cards
Power Pitcher (7 cards) limited to 3500 cards
Record Breaker (7 cards) limited to 3500 cards
The Franchise (7 cards) limited to 2400 cards
Career 100 HRs (3 cards) limited to 3200 cards
Autographs (3 cards) limited to 100 cards

The set is described in this blog post, from which almost all of the information in this post was derived:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28105481

The base cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814924

The standard base card front and back:

Ted Wood

Feng-An Tsai

Checklist Translations: 1993 Chinese Professional Baseball League [COMPLETE]

     For the 1993 season, with the league expanded by two teams, the official CPBL set expanded to 205 cards, comprised of 161 base cards and the rest dedicated to various special events and player awards and holograms.  The holograms (cards 186-194 &196-205) represent the annual award winners, limited to 5000 copies, and monthly MVPs from the season, limited to 3000 copies. The color scheme for this issue is on the team names (in English) along the bottom edge on the front, and as a bar containing the team, player name and uniform number on the back. After three years of plastic cards, the 1993 set was issued on the more traditional paper cardstock.  With the larger set came larger packs.  For 1993, the cards were issued in packs of 10 cards.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27500804

The annual award and league leader subsets can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41401334

The Gold Glove subset can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41772592

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814866

The base card front and back:

Chien-Fa Chang

Chung-Yi Huang

The monthly MVP card front and back:

Milton Harper

Checklist Translations: 1999 T-Point 1998 Chinese Pro-Baseball [COMPLETE]

    The license for producing the official CPBL set changed hands for the league's 9th season.  The new set was produced as "T-Point 1998 CPBL Traditional Card" and came in foil packs of 8 cards.  The base set contains 188 cards, distributed unevenly between the six teams present in the 1998 season.  There were seven limited print run insert sets.  These sets covered 1998's crop of rookies, monthly MVPs, yearly award winners and league leaders, Best Nine, Golden Gloves, game used jersey cards and autograph cards.  There was also a redemption set for autographed versions of the jersey cards.

The set is described, with examples of the packs, all card types and much more detail, in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28111594

The base cards can be seen in the accompanying album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814950

The Award Winner set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41528921

The Gold Glove set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41865766

The standard base card:

024 front

166 back

     Below is the complete checklist as I've managed to construct with much assistance from jackli7751.  The scans in the album cover only the base cards through #001-188. I'm updating the insert sets as I find them. Thanks to Mr. Westbay over at JapaneseBaseball.com, I have been able to complete the base set checklist with player data from one KT Chiu of the mostly defunct TWBaseball.info to translate the names.

CPBL Sets For an Ever-Shifting League

       Late last year (2013), I got excited by a posting on the official CPBL blog on what I thought would be the first real set to contain a card of Manny Ramirez in the Chinese Professional Baseball League.  Manny played for the EDA Rhinos for the first half or so of the 2013 CPBL season, and as the league usually issued sets after the end of the season, I thought it reasonable to expect to see a card with Manny in a Rhinos uniform by early 2014.

Checklist Translations: Smart '99 Chinese Pro-Baseball

     The primary set (issued in 2000) covering the 1999 CPBL season was issued by a new company, Sunrich Cards, Inc.  Each card had a foil logo featuring a pitcher and the word "SMART" written vertically, accompanied by "'99 CHINESE PRO-BASEBALL" sideways down the right side of each base card.  A special logo in the lower corner of each card marked the 10th anniversary of the CPBL.  The set was limited to 2000 copies (each card showing 1/2000 on the back), but only cards 183-226 were actually stamped with serial numbers.  While I haven't been able to tell for sure, based on the collections of like-numbered serial stamped cards I've seen on auction sites, I suspect this set may have only been issued in complete sets.

     The set contained 228 cards covering all of the teams (1-172), team logos (173-178), '99 post season (179-182), monthly MVP winners (183-196), the league's Best 9 (197-205), Glod Glove winners (206-214), '99 award winners and statistical leaders (215-226) and two unnumbered checklists.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28149093

Cards 1-172 can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814966

The Award Winner subset is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41548325

The Gold Glove subset is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41883136

The standard base card front and back:

Chien-Fu Kuo Lee

1994 Uni-President Lions Playing Cards

 

I recently acquired this set on eBay from a seller that had picked up a few baseball-related souvenirs on a trip to Taiwan back in the mid 1990s. All of the face cards feature photos of players from the 1994 Uni-President Lions team.  The box, and all card backs, feature artwork of Lions' pitcher Chang-Heng Hsieh. If there is any particular significance to the arrangement, it escapes me.

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)

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

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:

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

Checklist Translations: 2008 TSC La New Bears

    Sometime in the mid 2000s, Taiwan Sports Cards (http://www.taiwansportscard.com.tw/), more commonly known as TSC, began producing baseball cards for the CPBL.  In 2008, very similar to how BBM releases sets for each of the teams every year, TSC released pack-based sets for the Brother Elephants, Sinon Bulls and the La New Bears.  The sets featured the full assortment of inserts to be expected from a BBM pack-based team set; autographs, memorabilia cards, photo cards, etc.