Team-Issued Stadium Give-Away Sets in Japan

     As I've mentioned frequently here, a major source of frustration for the player collector (and probably for the type-card collector as well) is the lack of documentation for certain areas of the hobby.  An excellent example of this problem are the team-issued cards given away at the ballparks in Japan.  Most teams have been issuing cards, often multiple sets a year, for decades now, but these represented a major gap in contemporary price guides and checklist catalogs.  Gary Engel has included a few in his books, but mainly just Orix BlueWave sets due to the inclusion of Ichiro. When I asked him about it he explained that his interests tended more toward the vintage areas of the Japanese hobby, and that with all the still-undocumented vintage issues he still had to cover, and not having the resources of the likes of Sports Collectors Digest in its prime, he didn't have the time to spare to modern team-issued sets.  Given how much effort it has taken me to simply compile and translate checklists for mainstream sets each year, I understand his point completely.

The Buffaloes Bombers

Fresh off a sold-out engagement in Japan...

 the Dynamic Duo...

the Masters of the Long Ball...

For one night only!

Norihiro Nakamura and Tuffy Rhodes!

1988 New York Yankees Press Player Identification Photo

     I'm not sure what the technical term for this item would be, but for the price, I couldn't pass it up as an addition to both my Hensley Meulens and Roberto Kelly collections.  I've seen lots of these popup on eBay in the last year, mostly priced beyond what I'd want to spend, but this is the only one that has featured two players I collect with a starting bid of under $10.  It's just too bad it didn't also have Dave Winfield on it!

     Presumably, sets of these were available to the media as a way to help identify the players on the teams, and given the inclusion of Meulens on this one in 1988, I have to conclude it was distributed during Spring Training, as Bam Bam wouldn't see big league playing time until August 1989.

Japanese baseball card box break videos

     While I am probably one of the last people to delve into the online video box break scene, now that I've finally started watching some of these, I realized there was the usual gap in the hobby's awareness due to the language barrier.  To help with that a bit, I'd first like to direct you to the YouTube channel for user TakaTanakaGiants.  He's an American teacher, baseball fan and card collector currently living in Japan.  As such, he has access to the wonderful world of Japanese trading cards, and has been posting videos of his finds for the past several months.

A signature and a surplus of silk...starring Dave Winfield

      I try not to do it very often, but this past week I picked up a larger lot for a single item.   I was unaware of the existence of the above piece until I saw this lot, so I dropped the minimum $9.99 bid.  I'm not really sure what the proper terminology is for this, but it is the "postcard" version of the Z Silk cachet for the 9th Freehold Classic Sports Memorabilia Show.  A little Googling turns up several similar cards for other players, connected to other "Sports Memorabilia Shows" such as:

1990 ProCards AAA Promos

     Yet again, my saved eBay search caught a Hensley Meulens card I did not even know existed. Undocumented by Beckett and the Standard Catalog of Baseball cards, this promo set was probably issued sometime shortly after the 1990 Triple A All-Star game, but before the issue of the 1990 ProCards AAA set.  In an odd move, ProCards released their big 800 card, pack-issued set after the end of the 1990 season, so the back of the promo likely refers to the fact that the set would include all of the 1990 statistics on the card backs.  Below is the actual 1990 ProCards AAA All-Star card for Meulens: