2014 Calbee Fist Series: Completed!!!!

 This is the first time I have ever done it, I am proud to report.  I have succesfully completed the 1st series of 2014 Calbees!  Well, everything except the star cards, which I still need a few of.  Still, pretty neat, eh?

 I`d like to say that I did this bag by bag, but I have to admit to cheating on this one.  There was a pretty big lot of 2014 Calbees that I snared on Yahoo Auctions last week which, in fact, contained almost the whole set by itself.  With the cards I already had from buying bags I was able to fill in the holes and complete it though!

I was actually kind of surprised that I won the lot for only 600 yen plus shipping, given that there were 80 cards in it, which represented about 4,000 yen worth of chips.  There weren`t any star cards in the lot, which is why I still a need a few of those. I`m not hugely into the star cards anyway so I don`t really mind.

I love the way Calbee cards look when you fan them out.  One design change which they have made in recent years is to make the color on the backs of the regular cards specific to each team, so they look kind of cool when you fan them out as in the above photo.

Series 2 has also been officially released but as with last year, I have yet to find any bags in stores, most of which in my area are still stocking series 1.  Hopefully I will start to see them soon and maybe 2014 will mark the first year that I have ever completed an entire series of Calbee!

Some Gets: A Clyde Wright and Some Ebay Finds

The above is a Clyde Wright Calbee card that I got in the mail courtesy of Dave at Japanese Baseball Cards, part of an online trade of sorts we had worked out, although sending this card was more a very kind courtesy on his part rather than strictly the product of the trade.

I have wanted a card of Wright for a while.  Generally I don`t go for cards of Giants players much, but he is one of the colorful characters to appear in Robert Whiting`s You Gotta Have Wa, where his antics as `Crazy` Wright grace a few pages.

I also one a few cards on Ebay which also arrived in my mailbox the other day.  For $10.19 including shipping I got these 5 beauties

 Its was a pretty good deal.  Four of the cards are of pretty big name hall of famers and the fifth is a 1972 Topps High number that I needed for my set.

This 1977 Topps is one of the better Mike Schmidt cards in my collection.  Gotta love that moustache.

 This Duke Snider from the 1961 Post set was my favorite of the lot.  I like those old Post cards, they remind me a lot of the Kraft Dinner cards that I cut off the bottom of boxes in the 1980s.  Except the Post cards are nicer - Kraft Dinner cheaped out and didn`t get the license from MLB to use the team logos so everyone has an airbrushed cap.  Post went all the way though and actually made sure the LA was on Snider`s cap:

 I also got a couple of league leader cards featuring Nolan Ryan along with Steve Carlton (1973) and Tom Seaver (1977).  I love the 77 Ryan/ Seaver Strikeout Leaders card mainly for the contrast in the looks on their faces.  Seaver looks like he just told Ryan he was going to steal his girlfriend and now he is giggling about it while Ryan just looks kind of annoyed.  Classic card.

A prety good haul considering how little I paid.