1991 Calbee Hideo Nomo and Some Others

 I made another Yahoo Auction purchase the other day.  It was a bit of a splurge item, a large lot of 55 1991 Calbee cards, along with an album.

I only had a couple of 1991 Calbees before getting these so I guess this can be added to my list of Calbee sets that I am working on.  The 91 set is pretty cool, its design is simple and looks the same as the higher number cards from the 1990 set.  Among the highlghts are this card of current Chunichi Dragons catcher/manager Motonobu Tanishige back in his younger days:

 Of course the main highlight of the 1991 set are the rookie cards of Hideo Nomo.  I think there are 4 cards of Nomo in the 1991 set and this lot contained three of them, which was pretty awesome (though one did have a dinged corner, the only card with any damage out of the whole lot!)

55 cards still leaves me pretty far from a complete set so this will be another work in progress probably for another 20 or 30 years!

2002 Calbee: Tough Set, Nearing Completeion

 I picked up a large lot of about 500 Calbee cards on Yahoo Auction last week.  It was a mixed lot and I didn`t know what cards would be in it until they arrived (the photos were pretty grainy and the seller`s description was pretty vague). I kind of like buying cards that way, it builds anticipation in me that is similar to opening a wax pack.  Sometimes you get screwed with a bunch of damaged cards, but sometimes it pays off.

This one actually did pay off.  There was a pretty wide selection of cards, including about a dozen from the 1975-76 Calbee set which were alone probably worth almost as much as I paid for the whole lot.  The thing that got me most excited though was that about 100 of them were 2002 Calbees. 

I think the 2002 Calbee set is probably the most difficult to find out of the post-1998 Calbee sets.  Word on the street has it that the reason for this is Japan`s co-hosting of the World Cup that year with Korea, which diverted everyone`s attention away from baseball.  This resulted in Calbee printing way fewer baseball cards (and presumably way more soccer cards) that year, making the 2002 Calbees harder to find than most.

This story generally squares with my own experience in buying these lots, which almost never include any 2002 Calbee cards (the 1999 and 2000 sets on the other hand are usually over-represented, making me think they were printed in greater quantities.  Those were Ichiro`s last 2 years in Japan, which makes me wonder if his popularity transferred into greater baseball chip sales in those years, followed by a steep decline after his departure in 2001).

As somebody actively trying to complete most Calbee sets, my 2002 set up until now had been way less developed than any other set of the past 16 years, with only a few dozen cards mostly from the regular set.  With the additions from this big lot, I now suddenly find myself about 75% of the way to a complete regular set and well on my way with most of the subsets too.

The design of these cards is slightly different from most Calbee sets in that it has a 30th anniversary logo on the front, but otherwise they are about the same.  I think this must have been Hideki Matsui`s last Calbee baseball card before singing with the Yankees.

 The lot even included an un-used Challenge card from that year.  The 2002 set had a pretty sucky prize system, you had to collect and mail in two of these, which didn`t actually guarantee you a prize, but just put you in a draw for one of 3000 card binders they were giving out.  I much prefer it when Calbee gives special card sets as prizes rather than these stupid binders that don`t even have enough space for the whole set and generally look terrible (at least the recent ones).

 To commemorate the 30th anniverary of their baseball cards they issued a special memorial card subset whcih featured reprints of various cards from previous years.  I now have almost all of this set.  I have to say it is really really poorly designed, with just horrible looking beige or grey borders and a very uninspiring `Memorial Card` band along the bottom.  Do they really need to tell us in such big letters that this is, in fact, a memorial card?  Also I think the use of the word "memorial" is a bit misplaced, it sounds like the set is dedicated to players who have died in the past year or something.  Anyway, they did something similar in the 2012 set when they commemorated the 40th anniversary with reprints of cards from previous sets, but the subset from that year was much better, dispensing with the borders and just making a straight-up reprint of the cards. 

Anyway, thats my 2002 Calbee set so far, I`m down to about 30 cards for the regular set which I need. 

Looking Back: 2000 BBM

 I moved to Japan for the first time in December of 1999 (15 years next month, how time flies).  That meant that my first encounter with Japanese baseball came in the 2000 season and, along with it, my first encounter with Japanese baseball cards in the form of the 2000 BBM regular set.

I spent that first year working as an English teacher in Akashi, a small city just outside of Kobe.  I knew absolutely nothing about Japanese baseball  - or Japan come to think of it - when I arrived.  But I was quickly schooled about two things: the Hanshin Tigers and Ichiro.

Ichiro was just enterering what would be his last year in NPB, playing for the Blue Wave at Green Stadium in Kobe.  Everyone in Akashi knew who he was, though it seemed nobody was an actual Blue Wave fan, everyone in Kansai cheering for the Tigers instead.  I got to take in a couple of Tigers games at Koshien that summer and one game at Green Stadium between the Blue Wave and Seibu Lions in what is likely to prove to be the only time in my life I will have seen Ichiro play in person (he went 1 for 4 in the game, I don`t remember who won though).

Having collected baseball cards in the late 1980s and early 1990s back home, I had a vaguely formed interest in Japanese baseball cards but knew nothing about them until one day I was wandering around near Sannomiya station in Kobe.  Back when the Blue Wave still existed they had a team-goods store in Sannomiya which I stumbled across by chance.  I wasn`t really interested in Blue Wave goods (like everyone else I had chosen to identify as a Tigers fan) but they did have a box of 2000 BBM packs for sale.  I picked one up for 200 yen and that was the beginning of my Japanese baseball card collection.  I vaguely remember having gotten a Bobby Rose league leader card and thinking that was pretty cool since he had a monster year in 1999, but other than that I don`t remember  the contents of that 10 card pack.


I provide this relatively lengthy piece of autobiographical reflection mainly just to establish that the 2000 BBM set has a special place in my heart since it was my first.  It was a fairly brief affair at the time as that one pack would turn out to be the only one I would buy that year.  Nonetheless, that set with its admittedly boring design holds a special place in my collection.  Which is why, last week, I splurged on Yahoo Auctions and bought a partial 2000 BBM set (480 cards, but some of them from the preview) in a nice binder with pages.

I normally don`t go for BBM sets, being a Calbee collector, but I made an exception in this case.  In retrospect its actually kind of annoying for me that I didn`t buy a bag of Calbee chips back in 2000 as my first baseball card purchase. At the time however it wouldn`t even have occurred to me to look for baseball cards in the chips section of my convenience store and the internet wasn`t exactly overflowing with useful information like that back then (and even if it had been, I didn`t own a computer). 

Anyway, the 2000 BBM set is pretty cool.  It has one of Ichiro`s last regular cards in it which is rather colorful:

And Leo Gomez, who I remembered from his days as a prospect for the Orioles in the early 1990s:

As a Canadian I was surprised to discover that year that former Toronto Blue Jay all star Tony Fernandez (who was my best friend`s favorite player back in high school) playing for Seibu in the same game that I saw Ichiro play in.  His 2000 BBM card is pretty boss:

And being BBM they  of course have to load the set up with a bunch of insert sets of varying levels of interest:

Included among which is the New Face set, where you can see which teams the Giants raided for their star players in a given year.  It is basically the same idea as a Traded or Update set, which makes me wonder why they thought it was worth turning into an insert set, but anyway....

In conclusion I now have a slightly over half-complete set of 2000 BBM which I have decided to add to my list of  "sets I am working on."  It is the only BBM set on that list, though I might add the 2002 set that I worked on but never finished back in the day.  The fruits of that endeavour are in a storage bin in my parent`s garage in Canada at the moment, I`ll have to retrieve them someday....

Collecting 1984 Calbee

 As I mentioned in my previous post, 1984 Calbee has recently officially entered my list of vintage sets that I am trying to complete.

This was spurred by a Yahoo Auction purchase I made last week of a lot of 59 cards from the set.  I added these to the 60 cards I already had (in a piece of incredible luck the new cards were almost all ones I needed), meaning that I now have over 100 different cards.

 This is the third vintage Calbee set that I am actively trying to complete, with the 1987 Calbee (about 3/4 complete now) and the 1990 Calbee low numbers (about 1/2 complete) being the others.

The big difference between the 1984 set and the 1987 and 1990 ones is the difficulty of putting them together.  The latter are among the more do-able of the pre-1998 rare Calbee sets to complete, while the 1984 set is among the hardest.  The sheer size of the set - 715 cards - is daunting (the 1987 set has about half that and the 1990 low number series only 55).  Among these are a number of series which were only released regionally in limited quantities (detailed here) which account for about one quarter of the total and are incredibly expensive.  I don`t have any of those and might content myself with tracking down the easier to find ones first and, if I become independently wealthy in the future, might work on the rare block ones then.

There are some pretty cool cards in the set, which has a distinctive look to it.  I love this Reggie Smith with his hair overflowing from under that batting helmet.

 The final cards in the set are season highlights.  This one commemorates Koji Yamamoto`s 2,000th career hit.

I`ll be curious to see how far I get with this.  Where as the 1987 and 1990 sets I think I have realistic shots at completing within the next couple of years, the 1984 one might be more of a pipe dream.  Still though, I like this set quite a bit and hope I at least make the halfway mark or so.

Timely Purchase: a Couple of 1984 Calbee Randy Bass cards

With Hanshin having trounced the Giants 4 straight (yes!) and about to play in their first Japan Series in over a decade (interestingly also played against the Hawks), there has been a lot of talk about 1985, the last time they actually won it all.

I picked up a couple of cards of Randy Bass, the key player on that 1985 Tigers team, off of Yahoo Auctions that arrived today.  They are both from the 1984 Calbee set, which I am starting to make a more serious effort at putting together (more on that in another post). I kind of like these cards.  The one on the left, from the "big hat" part of the set, has a pensive looking Bass staring at the ground.  The one on the right, from the "little hat" part of the set, is kind of an awkward photo with his face mostly lost in shadow, but I love the pinstripes of the hat that the 84 Tigers wore.

I have a soft spot for the Tigers and Randy Bass is one of my all time favorite NPB players, so I am very tormented about who to root for in this series.  I have spent 4 years of my life living in Fukuoka as a Hawks fan and 5 years of my life living in Hyogo prefecture as a Tigers fan (plus 2 years living in Nagoya, my current city, as a Dragons fan).  It is very troubling because both teams have things that strongly attract me to them.  I only left Fukuoka in 2012 so this year's team still has a lot of the players I used to root for when living there - Matsuda, Uchikawa, Morifuku, Settsu, Honda and company.  On the other hand, I kind of fell in love with this Tigers team.  Going into that series everyone was saying the Giants would just walk over them easily, and seeing the Tigers turn the tables and make Kyojin look awful.....it was immensely impressive. 

I will have to think long and hard about this before game time......

In the Mail this Week: 1995 Calbee Tokyo Snack Cards

 I got a small pile of 1995 Tokyo Snack cards in the mail yesterday.  These are an interesting set.  Tokyo Snack is actually a subsidiary of Calbee, which for a couple of years in the mid-90s was given the role of baseball card producer in the conglomerate.  If you want to split hairs you could make the argument that in 1995 and 1996 there weren`t any Calbee sets, since both of them came with the Tokyo Snack brand, which is the maker name printed on the back of the cards:

But since Tokyo Snack is a wholy-owned subsidiary of Calbee, I think collectors are correct to regard this as a Calbee set in all but name only.  As such it fits into an interesting period in Calbee card development.  The 1990s are actually an odd decade for Calbee.  In the 1970s all their sets (except for part of the 75-76 set with the pink borders) had a standard form - full bleed photo with the player name and team written in small letters on the front.  In the 1980s they reduced the size of the cards but, except for part of the 1984 set with the little hats on it, kept the same design pretty consistently throughout.  In the 2000s and 2010s, they have pretty much had the exact same design throughout with only minor modifications from year to year.

In other words, in each decade Calbee had one basic design philosphy and applied it almost uniformly to every set year after year. Except the 1990s.

If you look at Calbee sets from year to year in the 1990s you`ll notice that it is the only decade in which the design of the cards changed, sometimes radically, from year to year.  This gives Calbee cards from the 1990s a degree of uniqueness not found in other decades.

It is kind of interesting to speculate why this was so.  My guess would be that the introduction of serious competition from BBM from 1991 forced Calbee to respond and they experimented with a series of design changes in a trial and error process.  In 1998 they seem to have had that "Eureka!" moment since from that year on they have kept pretty much the same design.  

The 1995 set is one of the more interesting ones from this period.  The shape and size are the same as that used from the latter half of 1990 through the 1996 set, but the design, which is quite colorful and distinctive, was only used in this one set.  Though I generally prefer the full bleed design they usually use, I kind of like this set.  It looks very 1990s.

I got a half-dozen cards in this lot.  Prior to that I only had one card - one of the low number Ichiros.  I will add this to my list of "sets in progress that I will hopefully one day finish but probably not."  The high number cards in this set are notoriously hard to locate, having been sold in very limited quantities and containing a couple of quite expensive cards of Ichiro (who, incidentally, had his first regular Calbee card in this set, though he had been featured in a regional set in 1994).

Calbee Series 3 - Rarer than Other Series?

OK, so it is now mid-October.  The regular season is over and the first two rounds of championship series are also almost over (so glad that the Tigers beat the Giants in the CL series BTW).  And you know what has finally happened?  I have finally gotten my first bag of Calbee Series 3.

It seems almost every year this happens.  When Series 1 comes out in the spring, bags are available at almost every convenience store and grocery store I go to.  And, being so happy to see them after so many months and overflowing with excitement for the months of baseball ahead, I always jump in and buy them almost everyday.  My salt intake in the early months of the baseball season rises accordingly.

Then when series 2 comes out the occasion is marked by....most of those same stores continuing to sell bags of series 1.  It seems most of them prefer to burn through their inventory of the first series before moving on to the next.  Many of them don`t even bother, it seems that by the time they do sell off all their series 1 bags they decide to just move on and use the shelf space for some completely different snack.  So the number of stores selling Series 2 is always a bit less than the number that had been selling Series 1.

By the time Series 3 is released, the number of shops stocking them has shrunk to almost nothing.  Being released late in the season undoubtedly hurts it, as does the fact that those stores which bothered to stock series 2 still have bags of those to unload.

This year I have not seen a single bag of Calbee series 3 in any convenience store (and I go to a lot of convenience stores).  This is not unusual, the same thing happened last year.  The only places that seems to stock Calbee Series 3 are large scale retailers like AEON (which is where I finally bought my first bag).

This makes me wonder if Calbee Series 3 cards are rarer than cards from earlier series.  I have noticed when buying older Calbee series from the 2000s in large lots that the breakdown of cards on average is about 50% Series 1s, 40% Series 2s and 10% Series 3s - the drop-off once you get into the higher numbers is noticeable and for most of the sets that I am working on between 2002 and 2012, the biggest number of holes in my sets are in Series 3.

There is of course a historical comparison to be made with American Topps sets from the pre-1974 era when they issued them in series.  With only a couple of exceptions, for pretty much every Topps set from 1952 to 1973 the last series are considerably harder to find than the lower number series because fewer people were interested in buying cards towards the end of the season.  When Topps and other companies re-started issuing sets in series in the 1990s by then the hobby had gotten so sensitive to real or perceived scarcities they couldn`t issue one series in lower numbers than another without affecting the price, so they didn`t.

Its interesting that Calbee seems to be doing the same thing that Topps did way back in the old days....yet another little oddball thing that I like about Calbee.  Well, actually I kind of prefer it when the bags are available in convenience stores....