Sort of.
What I have completed is Series 1 to 3 - a total of 216 cards. Unfortunately Calbee didn't stop with those and tacked on a 20 card set of Giants cards (217 to 236) to the end of it. Those last 20 cards were short printed (probably only regionally released but I'm not sure about that) and are extremely rare compared to the rest of the set. I only have one of them so am technically still 19 cards short of the complete set.
The idea of spending a ton of money on late 90s cards of Giants players is not particularly enticing to me, which is why I've decided to declare this set "done" without those last cards (though if I ever stumble on any at a good price I'll be quite tempted to buy them, they only show up for sale every once in a while).
I started seriously building this set about 3 years ago when I bought a big lot of them on YJA. Compared to Calbee sets from the 70s or 80s this one was a lot easier and a lot cheaper to complete. I was aided in finishing it off by a seller who had a huge stockpile of late 90s Calbees putting a whole bunch up for sale last week. The key cards in the set are three Ichiro cards (one for each series) and I was fortunate to get all of them in the big lot I started out with. No single card cost me more than 50 Yen, and I think the whole project only set me back about 6,000 to 7,000 Yen total, which is not bad.
One thing I'm debating now is what to do with them. They are just sitting loose in a box along with most of my other Calbee sets. I'd like to put most of them into albums some day, but right now its only a select few (1975-76-77, 1986 and 1987) that get that privilege, mainly because my budget for albums and pages is limited. Over time I'd like to get all the vintage ones into albums (which is tricky for the 1980s sets due to a shortage of 12 pocket pages), but I'm not sure where to draw the line between "sets that are good enough to be in albums" and "sets that stay in boxes". The late 90s seems to be roughly where I'll be drawing that line, but I'm not sure which side the 1997 set will fall on.
Congratulations on completing the first 3 series of this set! Shame that Calbee didn't just wrap the set up at 216 adn produce these Giants cards as part of their own set.
ReplyDeleteThanks!!
DeleteEpoch has been short printing the OB cards in their NPB set the last few years and BBM started short printing the First Pitch Ceremony cards in 2nd Version and Fusion. I considered my sets complete even without the short prints.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bad one to ask about whether to put the cards in binders though. All of my cards are in binders which means I have a lot of them....
The deliberate short printing of cards in a numbered set like that really annoys me.
DeleteI would definitely like to put all my collection into albums like you, but space issues have led me to keep most of them in 400 or 800 card boxes that can be easily stacked on my limited shelf space. Only the ones I'm really serious about get put into albums. When my kids grow up I hope to be able to expand a bit and put all the sets into albums.
Congratulations on the almost completed set! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!!
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