2023 Season at an End

 

The Hanshin Tigers beat the Orix Buffaloes to win the Japan Series over the weekend, marking the official end of baseball games for 2023.  I always feel a little melancholic during the week after the Series ends since its the time of year when you have the longest wait until the next game.  This year I'm feeling it a bit more than usual since this was one of my most enjoyable years as a baseball fan.

This is kind of odd since I'm a Dragons fan and they had the most miserable year imaginable.  They finished with the worst record in NPB and set a number of records of futility (most times getting shut out for example).  But it was a great year nonetheless.

I was reminded of how the year began when I got a complete set of Calbee Series 2 in the mail the other day.  As I mentioned a couple of months ago, bags of Series 2 only briefly appeared in stores in August and then completely disappeared about a week or so after they showed up.  This prevented me from collecting the set bag by bag with my kids like we did with Series 1, so I just paid 1,000 Yen to get the regular set from a case-breaker on Yahoo Auctions.  

The above card is from a pretty decent 12 card subset in Series 2 which features scenes from each team's first victory in the 2023 season.  It shows Shuhei Takahashi in a game on opening day against the Giants.  I remember watching it on TV and it was such an exciting game.  The Dragons were losing 3-2 heading into the 9th, but were able to load the bases for Takahashi who came through by hitting a bases clearing double to put the Dragons ahead.  The picture on the card shows him celebrating that moment.

I had high hopes that this would be a harbinger of things to come, but both the Dragons and Takahashi unfortunately peaked during that exact inning and everything went downhill from there.  The Dragons finished last, and Takahashi only hit .215 with no home runs in limited play throughout the rest of the season (his 3 RBI from that one hit constituted more than 20% of his total over the entire season).  

But the game did accomplish one thing, which was to get me and my kids excited about the baseball season.  I took them to the Dome to see a couple of Dragons games in person, and we watched a lot of games on TV (or more accurately I watched a lot of games on TV and they would sporadically stop playing to have a look for a few minutes with me every now and then).  I took them to the park a lot to play ball too, and my son and I went to the batting centre.  

We also had fun collecting cards.  We had a crack at completing Calbee Series 1 bag by bag which ran into a few snags due to Calbee's distribution problems this year but when they finally sorted that out we did have a lot of fun opening bags together and got most of the regular set done.  When Calbee screwed up Series 2 (as mentioned above) it turned out to be a kind of blessing in disguise as I discovered the absolute joy of  buying unopened boxes of Epoch packs that didn't contain "hits" and were thus cheap as dirt. The kids and I formed a tradition of each opening one pack whenever we watched a game on TV and throwing all the Baystars cards onto the floor in disgust (because the Baystars beat the Dragons on the first game we went to at the Dome this year).  We kept this up throughout the season and in fact opened the last packs I had over the weekend during Game 7 of the Series.  We didn't quite finish the set, and most of the cards have dinged upper right corners from when my daughter dropped the box they were in, and the Baystars cards have additional damage from being thrown about in disgust, but who cares?  The point in collecting cards is not to own cards, but to have fun in getting them and this was a success in that regard.  

So all in all I had a lot of fun cheering for a lousy team and having my normal collecting routine disrupted by Calbee's bizarre incompetence in distributing cards.  Hopefully 2024 will be another nice one.  

PS: I haven't been posting much recently but this is just due to me being insanely busy at work. The blog is still going and I'm still collecting, hopefully things will settle down and I'll be able to get back to the blog a bit more often in the near future.  

Calbee Series 2 was here, breifly

 

Bags of Calbee Series 2 chips appeared in stores last week for a very short time.  I bought three bags at my local supermarket.  I went back a couple of days later and they were gone, sold out.  A trip to another supermarket yesterday turned up the same thing.  Its like what happened with Series 1 all over again it would seem.

This time though it doesn't seem to matter, at least from my perspective.  My kids had a lot more fun opening the Epoch packs that I got so when I brought these ones home, they showed no interest in opening them with me. I ended up just throwing them in the snack drawer for later.  Looks like we won't be collecting Calbee Series 2 in my house this year.

I did open one bag though, got a couple of regular cards from the miniscule 60 card base set.  While reading the bag as I did so I realized there is a major change with this Series - no Lucky Cards!

As I've written about before, Lucky Cards are a promotional thing Calbee does.  Pull one of them and you can send it in to the company for a prize of some sort.  The prizes have varied considerably over the years.  When I collected the 2004 set (the first time I tried to put one together bag by bag), they had a really fantastic Star Card set that you could get by sending in three Lucky card tabs.  More recently they have been less exciting albums, but they were a fun thing to pull nonetheless.

As far as I can tell, this is possibly the first time in its entire 50 years of making cards that it hasn't included Lucky Cards (or an equivalent, they were known as Home Run cards back in the 70s).  I've seen Lucky cards or their equivalent (ie something you could pull from packs that was redeemable for a prize) for every Calbee set going back to the 90s, and I've also seen them from most of the sets from the 70s.  The only time period I'm not certain about is the 80s. I've never seen a mini-card sized Lucky card from those years, and they didn't do Home Run Cards like they did in the 70s during that decade either.  But at the same time, I've seen albums (which are often the prizes you would get) for most of the sets from the 80s, so they likely had some way of being won similar to a Lucky Card, but I'm not sure how it worked. 

Anyway, history aside I'm not sure if this is just a temporary change related to the supply problems they've been having this year, or if its a permanent one.  If its the latter, its unfortunately just another reason for me to not buy new Calbee cards each year, which is a shame.  This is just speculation on my part, but abandoning the Lucky Cards might simply be a cost cutting measure unrelated to their current problems.  Inflation in Japan - which has been non-existent during the 20 plus years I've lived here - suddenly appeared last year and drove the prices of most things you find on supermarket shelves up.  This has led all food companies to either raise prices or engage in shrinkflation.  The price of bags of Calbee chips this year is the same as last (98 Yen), which makes me suspect the loss of the Lucky Cards is Calbee's way of keeping it that way.  Personally I would prefer to pay a bit more per bag for a decent set (more than 60 cards) and with some bells and whistles that my kids could chase, which the Lucky cards were great for (or would have been if they were a bit more generous like they were back in 2004).  I'm curious what they'll do in 2024, but not sure if I'll be collecting the set anymore by then!

Collecting 2023 Calbee is Frustrating

 

I made a bit of a fuss on here in April when the first Series of Calbee cards/potato chips failed to materialize on store shelves on schedule.  

They ended up appearing about a month later than the announced release date, mainly a result of increased demand due to Japan's WBC win and Calbee's apparent prioritization of Amazon over brick and mortar retailers,  

Thankfully for about two months after they finally came out - roughly late April to late June - I was able to obtain a regular supply of them at my local supermarkets and would stop to buy three bags (one for me, and one each for my kids) on the way home from work several times a week.  This ritual is by far my favorite baseball card collecting activity ever.  We were able to slowly put together most of the set, we're about 10 cards short of the base set now and still need about half of the (harder to find) Star Card and Legends card subsets.

I picked up some cheap albums from the 100 Yen shop, and we also hit a Lucky Card which we redeemed for another album, so we've been putting them in those.

Frustratingly though at the end of June all of the stores pulled Calbee baseball card chips from their shelves.

This is actually normal because late June is when Series 2 comes out and replaces Series 1 on the shelves.

Only this year Series 2 is yet to be seen.  

A few weeks ago Dave had an email back and forth with someone at Calbee who suggested that Series 2 might not come out until August 21st (or perhaps even October 9th, the message gave these two dates but was a bit cryptic about what they meant).  Series 3 might be a write-off completely.

So here we are, the middle of the season - in fact this is exactly the All Star break - when demand for baseball cards is usually at or near its peak and yet there are no baseball card chip bags on store shelves like normal.  And it seems we won't see them again until the season is nearly over and interest in collecting them is likely to be waning considerably.  

The worst part is that my kids like them so much that they are actually asking me to go and buy more because they miss opening them!  Even my daughter, who is five and not a big baseball fan, gets excited about them (she was the one who got the Lucky Card and that really got her into it.  Whenever she gets a shiny star card she proudly shows it off to her mom and then gives it to me to put in the album if we need it).  

So this is all very frustrating.  I wish Calbee would get its act together, having their baseball card chips in stores is a key part of the "being a baseball fan in Japan" experience and the season really just isn't as fun without them (especially with my Dragons in last place. Its not a coincidence that I haven't been posting as much as usual for the past few weeks....)

Big Pile of Calbee Baseball Card Chips Bags

 

Went to my supermarket on the way home and found these glorious babies.  98 Yen per bag for as many bags of Calbee baseball card chips as you can buy.  Oh so good.  

Calbee Cards are Back, Thank God

 

About a month ago I was complaining that Calbee baseball card chips weren't available in stores like usual this year.  It seemed that heightened popularity due to Japan's WBC success combined with Amazon sellers getting some sort of priority access meant that retail stores had been left in the lurch.  For the first time in many years spring in Japan had arrived without Calbee baseball cards on the shelves.

I'm happy to report that little over a week ago bags finally started to appear in major supermarkets in my neighborhood and I've been able to start buying them on a regular basis again.  Hooray!

Most importantly for me, this means that my kids are getting into it again this year too.  I buy a few bags at a time at the supermarket and keep a stockpile at home. This allows me to randomly say "Hey, want to open some baseball card chips with me?" when the two of them seem to be at a loss for activities to do, or when I'm watching a game on TV and they come into the living room to sit with me.  Both of them have been responding quite positively when I do that and we each open one bag (with three of us that leads to a net total of six cards) and see what we got.  It only eats up a couple of minutes (more if we eat the chips), but its a nice ritual to go through every once in a while as we slowly build up the set over the year.  Doing that with them last year was definitely the most enjoyable experience of my collecting life - including even my own childhood experiences collecting on the playground.  Not being able to do that for the first month of the season had been frustrating, so I'm quite glad to be able to do it again. 

This, more than anything else, is what I really like about Calbee cards.  I complain on here a lot about their repetitive photography and other things, but those are relatively minor quibbles and I really do love them as a card maker.  They are the only one that I know of, in Japan or North America, that has successfully maintained a child-friendly business model in the face of decades of crass, commercial "grown-up-ization" of the baseball card collecting hobby.  While they've certainly made a few adjustments over the years in response to hobby developments - they have insert and chase cards - none of these have led them to seriously jacking up the price or succumbing to the many temptations that I remember seeing card makers in the US falling to in the 90s which really ruined the hobby back then.

So I'm happy to be able to work on another set bag by bag this year.  My son even pulled a Lucky Card yesterday which means we can mail it in for an album.  He was quite excited by that despite being a bit let down by the album he got in the mail last year.  Its just the thrill of hitting a chase card I guess, but I was glad to see that enthusiasm still there.  

Calbee and Amazon are Making me Mad

 

As I mentioned last week, I've been having a very hard time finding any Calbee baseball cards in stores this year.  The cards were supposed to go on sale on March 27th in convenience stores, and April 3rd in Supermarkets, but so far I've only been able to find them for sale in one small kiosk in a train station near the Nagoya Dome.  Unfortunately that store is not on my regular commute, so except for the three bags I purchased on that one day I haven't been able to score any more. 

This is not for a lack of effort on my part. Almost every day for the past couple of weeks I've been stopping on the way back home from work at every convenience store or supermarket I can find (and there are a lot of them) and every time I've come up empty.

This is very unusual.  I've been buying Calbee baseball chips for years now (first bag purchased was in 2000, though 2004 was the first year I bought them in large numbers to try to complete the set) and this has never happened before.  Usually within a few days of the release in late March bags of Series 1 Calbee baseball chips are to be found at pretty much every major supermarket chain in town (convenience stores are more hit and miss).  

I was wondering if this was just a Nagoya thing, but on looking it up online, Japanese collectors nationwide have noticed this too and are complaining about it on social media (like here and here). In fact they've done more than complain about it, they've asked their local supermarkets, and some even asked Calbee directly, about what is going on.  And the answer they received may surprise you.

The culprit?  You guessed it: Frank Stallone.

Ah that gag never gets old (laughs to self).

Seriously though, they indicate that the shortage is the result of the World Baseball Classic.  It seems that the demand for baseball cards has shot through the roof and Calbee hasn't been able to produce enough to meet it, which explains why they aren't on sale almost anywhere.

This kind of makes sense, but it also pisses me off. The increase in demand doesn't mean that Calbee is producing fewer cards than normal.  Nor does it mean that they are so popular that they are flying off store shelves: rather they aren't even reaching store shelves in the first place. 

We can infer from the fact that the only place that has a ready supply of them available is Amazon that what it really means is that Calbee has given most of its production to that outlet and left retail stores in the lurch.

This sucks for a few reasons. 

First, Amazon only sells  them in cases. Who in their right mind wants to buy bags of plain chips by the caseload?  Unless you are a flipper, probably not you. 

Second, Amazon prices are a rip off.  A case of 24 bags costs 5900 Yen, which works out to 245 yen per bag.  That is more than double what they sell for at convenience stores (the ones I bought last week cost me 116 Yen per bag).

Third, kids don't buy expensive stuff in bulk off of Amazon.  They can on the other hand buy cheap bags of chips at local supermarkets or stores.  This is one of the things I've always liked about Calbee: they make the hobby accessible to kids.  Limiting sales to Amazon on the other hand means only selling to grown ups.  Hard core grown ups at that: casual collectors who might buy a few bags here and there on their way home from work (like me) sure as hell aren't going to buy massive cases of overpriced chips they can't eat.

And just to reinforce my annoyance with Twitter, in order to find posts by actual Japanese collectors talking about this year's Calbee cards to try to find out what was going on I had to wade through a massive shitstorm of Amazon shill ads (like this one) mocking convenience stores for not having Calbee baseball chips in stock while encouraging us to go to Amazon to buy them.  In fact, going through the Twitter storm its notable that Calbee itself isn't doing most of the advertising for Calbee baseball chips anymore, Amazon is.  Fuck all of us who don't want to buy Calbee cards by the caseload at double the normal price is the message to us  collectors I guess?  

Its not clear if this situation is going to be resolved or if this is a permanent thing, - according to Calbee's own website the product is no longer on sale ("休売中") - meaning that this might be the first spring in many years that I've been unable to easily buy Calbee Series 1 baseball chips.  This is really frustrating. A few years ago I wouldn't have minded too much since I was getting into the habit of buying the complete sets off of Yahoo Auctions flippers anyway.  But last year I really enjoyed being able to collect the sets bag by bag with my kids and I spent all winter quite looking forward to being able to do so again this year.  Hopefully by the time Series 2 is released this stupidity will be resolved, though our enthusiasm will likely have waned by then (if the Dragons' performance so far is any indication of how that will develop) and this might be the sort of thing that completely kills my kids' already somewhat frail interest in collecting baseball cards.  Well done on that accomplishment, Calbee and Amazon.  

2023 Calbee Found

 
In typical fashion, as soon as I complain aloud about not being able to find something, I immediately find it.

After writing yesterday's post about not being able to find any 2023 Calbee, I decided to take another hunting expedition to try to find them while on my way home from work.  

Things didn't get off to a good start - I hit three separate convenience stores (Family Mart, Lawson, 7-11) and came up empty at each.  I was about to give up when I decided to try one last place that I viewed as a long shot.  In Ozone station near the Nagoya Dome, which I was passing through anyway, there is a little place called Bellmart Kiosk which sells snacks and is basically a convenience store.  Not being one of the major chains though I didn't think they would have any, but I would be walking right past it so I decided to duck in and take a look. 

To my surprise, they had them!  They were 116 Yen per bag, which is more than they usually cost. I'm not sure if this is due to inflation, or just due to how they price stuff at Bellmart Kiosk.  Anyway, I gladly bought three bags (one for me, and one each for my kids).

I got home just as the Dragons game was starting on TV so I sat down to watch the game with the kids and we each opened a bag. This was what we got:

The Oshima Star Card was a great find, and we actually saw him get a hit just a few minutes after pulling it which was a nice touch (even better was watching the Dragons beating the Swallows 3-1, breaking a four game losing streak).  

Being able to buy Calbee chips in stores like this has become a very important ritual of my life in Japan (which started off as just a one year stint as an English teacher looking for an overseas adventure in a new country and somehow evolved into me having spent more than two decades of my life here).  There are three things that mark the start of spring in Japan for me: 

1) Cherry blossoms coming into bloom;

2) NPB regular season starting;

3) Buying bags of Calbee baseball chips

Not being able to check off that third one had been bugging me for a while, it was almost like without being able to do that  winter would not be over in my mind.  Now that it is, I feel much better.

Anyway, this year's set is pretty much the same as every Calbee set for decades.  Same design, same predictable photography, etc, so I won't repeat my criticisms about those elements.  The one new thing, which Dave noted a few weeks ago, is that unfortunately the set this year is smaller than usual - just 60 regular cards rather than 72 as has been the norm in recent years.  That means that they feature just five players per team on regular cards.  Assuming they keep this up for Series 2 and 3, they'll end up with only 15 players per team on cards, way fewer than the full roster.  So likely my kids and I are not going to be able to get cards of a lot of Dragons players who we like, which is a bit of a bummer.

Hopefully now that I've confirmed that they are in fact starting to appear in some stores they will soon start appearing in others. In fact that is going to be a pre-requisite to us collecting the set via bags of chips again this year - that Bellmart Kiosk is a bit too out of the way for me to regularly stop there for chips so I'll need one of my local supermarkets to get their act together ASAP!

2023 Calbee: Missing in Action

 

Something weird is going on with this year's Calbee baseball chips.

Last month on Calbee's website (as also noted by Dave in his post about it) it was announced that Series one would be on sale from March 27th.  That is pretty normal, Calbee usually puts there Series 1 sets on sale at the end of the March, roughly coinciding with the start of the season.

I was looking forward to that date since I had so much fun putting the sets together with my kids last year.  So on March 27th I eagerly hit one of the supermarkets that normally sells Calbee baseball chips.  They didn't have them.  I then went to another.  They didn't have them either. And another. And another, etc etc.

Day after day for the past 10 days I've been hitting everywhere they might be available and always coming up empty.  I initially thought this might be due to the fact that most stores were still selling Calbee's Team Japan soccer chips and wanted to burn though their stock of those before switching to the baseball chips.  But last weekend all those soccer chips were pulled from store shelves, but no baseball chips appeared to replace them.

On looking a bit deeper into it, I discovered in a Calbee press release that the March 27th date was their release date for convenience stores only, which would explain why I didn't find any in supermarkets.  But I haven't found any in convenience stores either yet.  And the release date for supermarkets, April 3rd, has also already come and gone without them showing up. 

So I'm playing a very frustrating waiting game with Calbee right now.  Its not unusual for Series 2 or Series 3 to appear in stores later than the official release date since stores usually only start selling those once they've exhausted their supply of Series 1 chips.  But I've never seen Series 1 fail to appear on shelves within a day or two of the offical release date before.  I know the sets have been made because re-sellers on Yahoo Auctions are already selling singles and even sets.  But I want to do it the old fashioned way this year (even though, as Dave has informed me, the set is smaller than usual and has no design innovations or anything like that).