Random Japanese eBay Haul

     Occasionally, I'll just do random searches on eBay's Sports Cards and Memorabilia section for "japanese" and see what pops up. A few weeks ago I did that, caught a seller unloading a nifty assortment of random Japanese baseball goodness and put in a token minimum $.99 bid (+$4 S&H). About a week later, this is what turned up:

Three 1988 Calbee cards and six 1988 Calbee wrappers:

     The blurry one is card #117 of Rick Lancelotti. Until I saw this card, I don't think I'd ever seen a worse photo on a baseball card. And that includes some of the truly bad photos from some of those Venezuelan stickers I looked through while working on that earlier post. It really looks like a capture from a television screen. Or an actual photo of a television screen.

     The other two are #122, Toru Sugiura of the Yakult Swallows and #134 Shuji Fujimoto of the Nankai Hawks. 1988 Calbee were 2" x 2 5/8" or roughly the size of the Topps Leaders cards from 1986-1990, or your average Topps sticker from 1986-1990.

     Next in the package were three cards from the 1987 Amada Heat Sensitive Yomiuri Giants set, and what I'm assuming were the three packs they came in (mainly because the photo on the back of the pack matches the card of Kuwata, along with his signature):

#7 Sadaaki Yoshimura
#8 Tatsunori Hara
#18 Masumi Kuwata

     According to Gary Engel's Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide, 7th Edition, these cards are intended for some sort of combination of baseball and paper/rock/scissors game. Holding a finger on the black boxes at the top reveal the outcome of some sort of play, and the bottom three circles reveal paper/rock/scissors symbols.  If you click on the scan of the back, you can faintly see the results under each heat-sensitive box. He also says there were three different cards of each of 9 players, for a total of 36 cards. The cards are 2 5/16" x 3 3/8", so they're slightly smaller than a standard card. The packaging is about 3 1/8" x 5 1/4", and has a puncture in the top, as if it had been displayed on a pegboard hook, instead of in a box.

     The last few items present something of a puzzle, as I can't find them listed in Mr. Engel's guide, and they are unlikely to be connected due to the large difference in size. There are three small (1 1/4" x 1 9/16") magnets of Yomiuri Giants players. Two of #6 Toshio Shinozuka and one of #45 Kaoru Okazaki. Help identifying these would be much appreciated.

     The remaining packages, I'm guessing, are not what the magnets were packaged in as they are 3 3/4" x 6 5/8", about 4 times the size of the magnets.  Though having said that, I notice the Shinozuka photo from the magnet in the middle is on the lower left of the back of the wrapper.  Who knows? 

     Since measurement numbers don't always correlate to an good visual of size, I scanned each of these cards next to a standard sized card for comparison.

Hideki Matsui Home Run Collection

To take a brief break from the March of Meulens, here's set I've started chasing after a couple of big deals with a collector in the Philippines, as well as some work on Yahoo! Auctions Japan. So far, I've managed to pick up 237 of these.

From his debut in NPB, NTV & Toho (and later Upper Deck for his MLB home runs with the Yankees) issued a card for every one of Hideki Matsui's home runs....as he hit them. So all of the photos are from the actual home run or game, not like Topps and Upper Deck (in the US) where they issue a set of 500 cards and employ like 5 different photos.

The cards are all about the size and shape of a phone card, with rounded corners, and I'm guessing a description of the situation of each home run. They're pretty much broken up into a set for each season he played, as the year is listed on the front, and the actual date of the home run on the back. Here's a not so random sampling:

 

 

 

 

Lots of bats flying through the air, lots of home plate congratulations, but I think my favorites are those where you can see the ball leaving Matsui's bat.

And somehting you might notice about the Giants' helmets that separate them from every other team I've ever seen is that they aren't glossy and shiny. They have a very cool matte-style finish that seems to make them almost glow on the card as if they were added later as a digital effect. You'll see it a lot more in some of the Tuffy Rhodes cards when I get to them. I think the Yankees should adopt that style of finish on their helmets for a year. it would have been awesome had they done it when Godzilla joined the team.

In 1997, the cards got an upgrade and they added color to the backs:

If you notice just above the photo, this was home run #2 of the 1997 season.

Starting with #100, every multiple of 50 was a special card. I don't have 100 or 150, but I do have 200 & 300:

  

Blogger/teacher/Marinerd Deanna Rubin paid a visit to the Hideki Matsui museum in Japan about 2 years ago, and the museum (run by the Matsui family) actually has what look like 8x10 versions of many of this set on display as a part of the museum. Have a look:

Deanna at the Hideki Matsui Museum

And while you're there, browse around Deanna's great site. She takes the absolute BEST photos during the hundreds of baseball games she attends each year.