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.

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 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: 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: CPBL All-Star Players 1990-1994 ( 職棒五年明星賽球員卡 )

     In the early years of the CPBL, in addition to the main base sets, the league also issued sets for the annual CPBL All-Star series.  Similar to how the NPB does things, the CPBL often had multiple All-Star games each year, and each year the rosters were split into a Red Team and a White Team.  The team alignments for those would vary year to year so there wasn't really a set National League/American League style competition.

     I'm not entirely sure how these were issued, but there was typically a collector's album produced for the sets.  Below are the checklist as I've been able to construct along with the links to jackli7751's photo albums, the numbering is his, but is not actually on the cards.  Unfortunately, I don't think he has posted on his blog about the All-Star sets, yet.

1990 CPBL All-Star Players

Album: http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16845472

Card front:

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:

Checklist Translations: 1992 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     Moving on to 1992, and comprising at least 110 cards. For the first time, team logos are displayed on the front, and I suppose a brand logo (?) of sorts on the top left.  The only color scheme for this issue is on the players' names in the upper right corner on the front.  As with previous years, the cards are plastic with rounded corners.  A special album was issued to hold the set and was available to order on the backs of the 5-card packs.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27390664

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814816

The card front and back:

Checklist Translations: 1991 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     For the 1991 season, the official CPBL set was expanded to 103 cards (which seems a very odd number for a set), and were still issued on plastic with rounded corners, slightly smaller than the standard size.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27357188

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814806

     The card fronts have borders matching the teams' primary color, and as seems standard for almost all non-American cards, the players' uniform numbers are displayed prominently:

 

Checklists Translations: 1990 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     In the past couple of weeks, I found some resources for information on older baseball card sets from Taiwan.  The main resource is this blog and accompanying album:

中華職棒言舊苑
言舊員怪e紅傑克的懷舊蒐藏與歷史記錄
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog

     Everything is in Chinese, so I've had to make liberal use of Google Translate, but beginning with his first post, the author has been posting on the history of baseball cards issued in Taiwan since 1990, just after the Chinese Professional Baseball League was formed.   Thanks to this wonderful blog, I am now aware of some 60+ sets for the CPBL, the short-lived Taiwan Major League as well as the Chinese Taipei national team.  Now the door has opened to a new world of cards, I am attempting to assemble checklists for all of the sets referenced and add them to the SportsCardForum.com Inventory Manager.