Cards from Japan, Oh!

 

Sometimes it's good to have friends who like to travel to places like Japan.  I've never been there but I hear it's nice.  When I heard a friend was going to Japan, I asked that if he came across any cards there to pick up a few for me.  I didn't have any cards show casing some of Japan's ball players and thought it would be cool to finally own a few.  Luckily he found a card shop and began texting images so I pointed out a few cards. 

The first card I'll show off is the from the '74-75 Calbee set (at least I think the years are correct).  I've always wanted a card of the famous Sadaharu Oh.  The hard to see and read title at the bottom says "Oh – First baseman (Giants)".  Thank you AI bot.

As can be seen on the back, this is card #46.  According to the AI bot, the table shows Oh's home run pace across different years (the 39th Japanese year = 1964).  I'm not sure I'm reading the table right because Oh hit 55 home runs in 1964.

Another card from possibly a different set.  I really need to get a book on these things.

And 2 more nice action shots.  Unfortunately the back of the last 3 cards were too faded for them to show up on the scanner. 

I didn't just want vintage Japanese cards so I picked out some cards of Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki. Though I'm not much for the Dodgers, I hope he does well in MLB.  This card set me back 1200 Yen or about $8.  BBM makes cards for the Japanese market.

A look at the back of this card.  According to the AI bot this translates to:  Rōki Sasaki, who made his debut in 2021, had a rookie season in which he focused on building his body. He pitched in 11 games, going 3-2 with a 1.84 ERA. He struck out 68 batters in 63 1/3 innings, showing his potential. He threw a fastball that reached 158 km/h (98.2 mph) and showed a high strikeout rate of 10.1 per 9 innings.

I also picked out this really nice BBM insert numbered to 100.

These aren't exclusive to Japan (as far as I know) but I figured why not?

And I splurged a bit on this card but it is a 10.  From my limited web search, Epoch One is Japan's equivalent to Topps Now.  The interesting thing is that while the card was encased by PSA, it came inside another case (apparently to protect the PSA case) and I cannot figure out how to free it of the second case.  Oh well I guess there's nothing wrong with a card double protected.

So that's my limited exposure to Japanese cards.  Will I try to chase down more?  Probably.  These are some really cool cards, but being a vintage type of guy I'm more interested in those Calbee cards from '70's.  But I'll have to rely on the web to obtain more as I won't be going to Japan any time soon.

Until next time happy hunting!