Upgrades

 The only baseball set I've completed that has a checklist with over 100 cards was the 2012 base Sega Card Gen set. I blogged about finishing it nine (9!) years ago. All these years later I'm still very happy and proud I was able to finish it, but at various points during these past few years I've had that one thought that a collector probably doesn't want to have but does at some point.

What happens if/when I try to move this set?

To be clear I have no real intentions to part with this set, at least not right now. It took me two years across two different countries to finish it. Trying to sell this would be a nightmarish undertaking as there's no real market for this.

At the same time however that thought exercise was useful in helping me revisit something I probably should've done a while ago before the wells dried up, which was making the set actually ready to be moved if necessary.

You see even though I assembled all 408 cards in the set, one key issue is that a few of the cards needed upgrades. They fall into two distinct categories.

1). Inked

If you look at the scans I posted when I first finished the set you'll see that a few are autographed. Very early on I had a loose but lofty goal to get as many of these SCG cards signed as possible. It didn't happen often but when it did I tried to make sure the player got a copy to keep themselves. After I managed to get myself a big lot of SCGs from 2010 and 2011 I switched to those instead but the fact remains that for some cards I ended up with only an autographed copy and not an untouched normal card. As cool as an autographed SCG card is in theory, I'm 99.9% sure that if you're getting a full set you want an unblemished copy. I had three cards that fell in this category and thanks to a seller on eBay all were upgraded (or downgraded?). 

Ivan Nova

Acquired at a card show Nova was signing at. I gave him the only other copy I had on the spot. He was really nice and even took a picture with me.

Chase Headley

Headley was one of the most responsive TTM signers when he was active. I tried giving him a copy for him to keep and he just signed that and sent that back to me anyway. What a guy.

Yoshinori Tateyama

For one summer Tateyama-san was in the Yankees' minor league system after signing as a minor league free agent. I sent him a TTM request and similar to the Nova situation, the signed copy ended up becoming my only copy. Luckily his card is easier to find as Japanese MLBers in the set wind up on Japanese sites like Yahoo Auctions or Mercari more often than the other players in the set do. Although they're also at risk of being priced way too high.

2). Beginner Promos

The second category of cards in need of upgrades were cards that I technically acquired but they were promo cards. You see these cards came in individually wrapped cellophane packs (1 card per pack) that were given away to new players at a few select arcades that had the Card Gen machines. Given how you'd only get one card per playthrough, you'd have to play several times before you were able to finally assemble a full team with cards, so these cards were supposed to help beginners get on the fast track.

The best way to denote which ones are these beginner promos is by looking at the Sega Card Gen logo on the top left. You'll notice that the words "CARDGEN" is actually 95% filled in with blue.

For these I had about four cards in need of upgrades including the John Jaso above.

Enerio Del Rosario

Jose Constanza

Henry Rodriguez

I was only able to upgrade three of these four. Which isn't terrible, but has me feeling a familiar sense of dread that I thought I was able to leave behind years ago.

Rodriguez, the lone upgrade I wasn't able to make, is a Washington National. The thing about the 2012 Sega Card Gen set is that the Nationals are really really rare. Maybe even rarer than the foil rares. That's the whole reason Gio Gonzalez and Tyler Clippard were the last two cards I needed to originally finish the set.

If I had to guess the Nationals were likely short printed, no documented proof of this exists but I did hear this via word-of-mouth from two different stores under the Mint umbrella that sold Card Gen cards back then. A lot of these cards I saw like twice but then never again. This set is already niche and obscure, this doesn't help! I did ask the seller I bought the rest of the upgrades from just in case and they confirmed they didn't have Rodriguez or any Nationals.

It's ironic, years ago when I got that Rodriguez card I was really really ecstatic that it was right there in the open, for the taking and filled a set need. Now all these years later I still consider it filling a need, but is also the last thing standing between a legit "pure" base set (based off one logo) and one that is technically complete but also kinda sort've not maybe.

Will the hole ever be filled? Maybe, I think the more likely scenario is that I grow old and just dump this set onto someone and have it be their problem (should they perceive it as such) before I ever find another copy. But anything is possible. After all I didn't think I'd ever finish the set in the first place. I might keep an eye out but I won't be obsessing over it, there'd be no point.

And since we're talking about Card Gen again for the first time in a while, let me also just quickly wrap this post up with two unique cards I picked up sometime earlier this year.

The first is this Prize Foil rare of Takashi Saito.

In my last Card Gen post I blogged about the Hideki Matsui version of this, but for those of you who missed it or forgot, this card was one of the prizes given to people who won the tournaments held at arcades around the country. 

This Saito was left in its cellophane which suggests that the lucky soul who won this never used him for their team.

I got another one with Kosuke Fukudome too. This one was already freed from the cellophane so I assume whoever won this immediately slotted this card to use for their team/games.

Amazing how much clearer the scan looks when cellophane isn't in the way.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.