Hello Old Friend

It's been a while, but for the first time in years I can say that I have a new Sega Card Gen card in my collection.

Cole Hamels (EX-04), here is my latest pickup from the 2012 Sega Card Gen set.

At this point Card Gen is all but dead and gone. With only a few singles available online and the game itself largely forgotten.

But sometimes I can still come across cards I didn't have yet. This Hamels here eluded me for five years for a simple reason. It's an EXclusive.

Well okay, the better explanation is that it's a shortprint of sorts. It wasn't distributed with the regular Card Gen set. It was one of the special cards that were set aside and given as participation prizes to people who entered contests, but didn't win the grand prize.

Hamels was one of the more notable exclusions from the base set, and now he can rejoin Roy Halladay (RIP) and Cliff Lee as part of the three headed monster of 2012.

As far as I know there were at least 16 special cards. 12 were used as participation trophies, and I believe four were part of a special promotion where you had to redeem them online or order them by mail or something weird like that.

Anyway, it's been a while since I got a Card Gen card in my clutches in again. It really brings me back to 2012-13, the year where I went full hog when it came to collecting cards (in Japan too). I kinda miss it.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).