Three for Three

 After managing to put a bowtie on two ongoing trades I've had with collecting friends in Japan, I wrapped up a third. This time with Twitter user @you_oh_, this trade was a lot less focused as it was centered more on the two of us just randomly chucking cards we thought the other would enjoy over any sort of cohesive main piece.

Might as well lead off with what was one of the more interesting cards in the package, at least to me. This is part of a set of cards called "Michi No Eki" which refers to resting stations for people driving long distances in Japan. Normally in America rest stops are limited to dingy McDonalds and gas stations on the side of the highway, but over in Japan these rest stops are sometimes places people actually drive to rather than just stop by en route to somewhere else. The reason for this is that these rest stops really put a lot of time, care and resources into making them almost worthwhile destinations. They tend to have very special foods you can only get there along with souvenirs that are a mix of the local culture of that prefecture for travelers to then tell other travelers. It's very Japanese that they make these things efficient, and even more Japanese that there's a card set dedicated to them.

The one above is of a stop called Nankoku Furari in the Kochi prefecture. I've never been to Kochi, let alone driven a car through it, but if I ever have the opportunity I'll have to check it out.

As far as actual baseball cards there were some 2021 Topps offerings but what really caught my eye were these Calbee cards from back in the day. These are quite small compared to modern Calbee cards but these photos are so fantastic that I don't really care. Look at how the colors on these things pop.

The backs have the players' names and some fun blurbs on them as players and people.

Luckily there were some recent Calbees in the mix too. The big highlight among these being my first Takaya Ishikawa card. Ishikawa was the Chunichi Dragons' first round pick in the 2019 NPB Draft out of Toho High School and was seen as one of the best prospects among the high school ranks. The Dragons won the lottery to get draft rights to him.

There was a quartet of normal-ish BBM cards in the mix too. Like my second Ishikawa rookie, an image variation short print of Shuhei Takahashi (thanks to NPB Card Guy for confirming), a super sparkly parallel of Toshiya Okada that the scanner failed to pick up, and an even shinier Masahiro Araki parallel that also failed to scan properly.

Although at least it's numbered to 30 copies. Also this graph shows how many hits Araki had every season during his journey to 2,000 career hits.

Finally for the second Japanese trade in a row we'll end on some Yu-Gi-Oh cards, like my first Sevens Road Witch from the revamped Yu-Gi-Oh! Rush Duel format. This is incredibly sparkly with an atomic refractor like shine going on but the scanner failed me again.

Also managed to get the regular foil version of the Sevens Road Witch and DMG the Dragon Knight. Always a welcome card to get.

Even better when the recently released variation with alternate artwork is in the mix too.

It's a shame this card isn't useable in competitive decks that could actually win games, but as collectibles they're fine.

And that was my third trade with one of my Japanese collecting buds. No autographs or anything this time, just clean fun.

あふりかなさん今回もまた楽しいトレードありがとうございました！

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.