3 Cards (Vol 23)

So after my trip to Japan I brought back a big stack of cards. There were so many cards in that stack that I had no idea where to start when blogging about them. So instead of condensing them all into a big post (which most of you will only read a quarter of), I decided to blog about them at a rate of three cards at a time. Maybe some of them will make for interesting material, maybe they won't. Let's find out.

Card #1

Leading us off is one of the very first baseball cards I ever acquired way back in the distant year of *checks notes* 2010. This is pretty near and dear to me because Akinori Iwamura was one of my favorite players when I first got interested in MLB. Here in 2019 I can appreciate other things than I did in 2010 about this card like how it's a bit smaller (it's got a shorter width than your typical card), and how it's one of the few Japanese cereal releases I've seen by Topps. Given what happened to Upper Deck in 2010, that sounds about right.

Anyway the back features a lot of fun stuff. Right off the bat there's a blurb about how Aki Iwamura's favorite number was one. So much so that his jersey number as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays was 1. And according to the New York Times (according to this card), he started training for the season on 1/1 at 11:11:11 AM. Woof!
This is also the only card I have where there's a Japanese recycling logo on its bottom right. Apparently this goes with the plastics.

Card #2

Pretty much all of the Fukudome's I found on this last trip were immediately sent to P-Town Tom. Why? Because well I'm indifferent to Fukudome (regardless of whether he's a Dragon or not), plus Tom's collection would benefit from them a lot more than mine would. But that promotion card there is the lone Fukudome card I brought over for myself since I figure that my collection should have at least one Fukudome card in there somewhere.

This card in particular is an ad for the then-upcoming 2004 BBM Chunichi Dragons set. With a breakdown of the various subsets found in the product.

Card #3

Now here's something you don't see everyday on our corner of the blogosphere, a Playoff Prestige card from 2005. Or really any card from 2005!

This was pulled in a pack by me at around age 11 or 12. At the time I was just happy to pull a Yankee but found it weird how he wasn't wearing the usual Yankees uniform. Then I realized that sometimes cards were made with players in their old uniform and the card companies put a blurb on the side to let collectors/fans know what happened.

If I had to guess this was probably the fourth or fifth Yankees card to ever come into my possession in general. Right after 2005 Topps cards of Jorge Posada, Tony Womack and Mike Stanton. One of these days I'd love to complete the 2005 Topps flagship Yankees team set, but have you seen the prices those fuckers command as singles? My goodness, the 2000's rarity factor is slowly turning into inflation. Which is bullshit.

That's nothing to say of Prestige. Though I wouldn't really want to collect it either. Maybe one day I might have Randy Johnson sign this card, but if he charges nearly $200 again then I'm perfectly okay with this remaining the same way it always has for the past 14 years.

And that concludes another edition of three cards.

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