Japanese Cards

[jwj20]

Hey all,

During my time in Tokyo, I managed to find a baseball card shop. Trying to look for some authentic Japanese trading cards. There are some cool sets they sell here, but I noticed the cards are incredibly expensive here.

For example a card of Murton (Matt Murton from the Cubs) sells for 8900Y, that is roughly 130 dollars. While Bruce Chen sells for 5400Y (roughly 80 dollars). Cheapest one I could find was 640Y, about 9 bucks.

Don't get me started on Ichiro or even Darvish.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone has collected Japanese baseball cards (Pacific league specifically) and what their take is on it. I know it isn't due to the dollar being on the decline -- because the low Yen is 100Y = 1 dollar, which still makes Murton an 89 dollar card and Chen a 54 dollar card.

I'm going to go to a Seibu Lions game tomorrow and see if I can do any better for cost.

Thoughts?

 

[DaClyde]

What you saw were either expensive insert cards, or someone who was just trying to gouge. Your average card of Matt Murton should go for more like $2-3, if that much. With shipping, you'll pay more, but the regular cards shouldn't be much more expensive than cards in the US.

I posted on my blog awhile ago about some online card shops I was able to find, and in the listing is a link to a posting Deanna Rubin did about a few of the Mint stores she visited around Tokyo.

As far as Japanese cards go in general, I love the designs. They've been killing Upper Deck and Topps in that category for years.

 

[jwj20]

They were amazing looking cards. But they were unbelievably expensive. Must have been a gouge technique. I saw them at a baseball card shop in Akihabara.

I'll definitely check out your blog though.

Thanks!

 

[robert326]

Not that it makes much of a difference, but are the Murton and Chen cards autographed? Or just inserts?

 

[jwj20]

They were holographic base cards. Some sort of set of roughly 350 cards. The vendor wouldn't me see more than what was in the case. He kept saying "no sightseeing. Only buy." A lot of stores where this way in Akihabara.

 

[bdink25]

Did you see anything for Barry Bonds?? I'd be interested but not at the extremely high price. Plmk thanks Butch

 

[robert326]

They were holographic base cards. Some sort of set of roughly 350 cards. The vendor wouldn't me see more than what was in the case. He kept saying "no sightseeing. Only buy." A lot of stores where this way in Akihabara.

That all is really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[DaClyde]

Also be sure to check out japanesebaseballcards.blogspot.com. NPBGuy does write-ups for all the BBM and Calbee releases. It sounds like what you have might be some kind of BBM Touch the Game parallel, but I haven't found mention of one yet. Touch the Game is BBM's premium brand, and some of the parallels can be tough.

 

[jwj20]

Also be sure to check out japanesebaseballcards.blogspot.com. NPBGuy does write-ups for all the BBM and Calbee releases. It sounds like what you have might be some kind of BBM Touch the Game parallel, but I haven't found mention of one yet. Touch the Game is BBM's premium brand, and some of the parallels can be tough.

Thank you for reminding me! It was a BBM product. I couldn't remember for the life of me. The cards reminded me of a nicer version of Topps Finest.

I really wanted to pick a couple up but couldn't stomach those prices. I'll see if I can do a search for the cards I saw.

 

[jwj20]

Here we are:

http://translate.google.com/transla...B+BBM+%2B+cards&start=20&hl=en&sa=N&prmd=ivns

edit: You will have to hunt on that page. Apparently the cut and paste did not work well. Here is the description of the card:

Merton limited edition Cross Stream Parallel Cards 2010 BBM Tatchizagemu 100! (057/100).

It sells for 525 US dollars on the site. It doesn't have the refractor look that I saw in this picture, but it is the right card.

 

[DaClyde]

Ok, those are pretty rare then. Cross Stream was sort of like the Yankee Stadium Legacy set where the set was broken up across all of BBM's products, making it a challenge to assemble. There was the regular insert, and then the much more scarce #/100 parallel. However, on the Japanese version of that page, it looks like all the prices are in Yen, so 525Y would be about $6.75.

Nice to know Card Fanatic has an online singles store, that will help me build the checklist for the Inventory Manager at SCF. I'd only been able to track down around players for 137 cards of the set so far and I think it's probably a 200 card set.

 

[mrmopar]

I had a brief penpal from Japan that I hooked up with through Baseball Digest. This would have probably been in the early 80s, 83 maybe 84. He wanted American stars like Rickey Henderson, Pete Rose, etc. I sent him some star cards as he requested and asked for similar caliber players, Oh being the only name I knew at the time. He sent me some Japanese cards. However, they were all Japanese writing and had no idea who he sent me. Looking at the stats though, it was apparent he had sent be a bunch of common players. We didn't correspond long. I'll have to find them and see exactly what they are someday.

Later, I made a couple trips to Japan in the Navy. I was not there long either time and had no real good way of finding my way around. I couldn't locate anything baseball card or memorabilia related other than some current periodicals/magazines. I picked up a couple of those. I also found these packs of soccer cards that looked like a version of the Action Packed cards we all "loved" in the early 90s. I only bought a couple of packs.

I heard that the cards I was sent were harder to find though and were often only found at the Stadiums and in full sets. Never did any research to see if that was true. I assume that these days, if not the same when I was there and even before, I'm sure those knowledgeable enough are scoring the land for the good stuff. I see some old 70s magazines listed on ebay at times, usually the same 3-5 ones. They are very colorful, but they are always listed at ridiculously high starting prices. I compare these to the old SIs, Sports, Baseball Magazine and other baseball/sport magazines we could buy here in the USA in the 70s/80s. I'm guessing that these may have been more scarce to begin with and perhaps the "collecting" culture was not as strong in Japan, causing much of that stuff to get tossed after initial purchase perhaps?

In the end, Japanese cards are a curiosity to me, but I wouldn't go broke trying to get them. Type cards would be fun to collect and maybe a star or two for the fun of it, but otherwise they are just too difficult and often too expensive to seriously collect for me. I have too many other wants that come first.

 

[DaClyde]

If you can find your cards, scan a few in, I'll see if I can track them down in Gary Engel's book. Cards from the 80s would most likely be Calbee cards, that came with small bags of potato chips or Takara that came as part of a team set as part of a game. The Calbee cards would have been slightly smaller than standard (maybe the size of the 1975 Topps minis), with full bleed photos on the front with just the player's name in Japanese, and backs with blue or pink writing.

 

[mrmopar]

These are from around 1980 I believe and small, like a 50 Bowman, maybe a little smaller. They are no-border cards.