An Ocean Apart, Once Upon a Time

 A while ago (months ago at this point) I finished watching an anime, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX (pronounced kind of like "ji-arcs").

It was released earlier in 2025 and is sort of a "what if" type alternate reality scenario in the Gundam franchise. Though primarily centered on its new characters with callbacks to longtime fan favorites along for the fun.

Going into the series I knew absolutely nothing about Gundam other than that it's about giant mechs fighting in space, how it's been around for decades, and that people are still extremely passionate about the model kits of the mechs.

That did nothing to dampen my enjoyment of the show. I'm positive that a lot of stuff went way over my head while the hardcore fans got some smiles. But even I could tell that the show was made with a lot of love and appreciation for the original show.

I looked a bit further and found that Gundam premiered with the first ever anime show back in 1979. It's grown into one of Bandai Namco's biggest names in the years since.

Admittedly when I saw the franchise was that old and that there were direct parallels between the newest (as of this post) show on the block and the first I was intrigued. Mostly because a connection to the past, even if I don't know exactly what it is, has a way of making something feel richer and cooler.

I'll also admit that when I saw it's been around since the 70's my mind went to my primarily source for 70's American pop culture, Night Owl Cards. NOC mentions life in the 70's and things that were around in the 70's pretty often using baseball cards as a vessel. In all my years reading that blog Gundam has never been brought up. Obviously.

In the 70's and most of the 80's the Pacific Ocean kept the US and Japan apart. The US importing Japanese anything was no where near as common or profitable as it is today. There was never any chance NOC or people around his age at the time were going to see Gundam unless they lived on the west coast or until anime started getting popular in the west in the 90's.

My mind went there because I knew this was the case, but it fits into this overall question I've been having if the physical barriers being patched up by the world wide web now has folks in the two countries sharing a lot of similar experiences than you'd think.

Recently there's been a lot of attention on Gen Z (think folks born after 1995 up until roughly 2010), since they're the newest crop of college grads. I'm a late millennial so I've seen them (or at least the early ones getting talked about now) in the US, I've worked with them and for a brief period of time I've been classmates with them. Since coming back to Japan my time has largely been spent with people like a decade younger than me who are smack dab in that Gen Z timeframe.

The overall vibe I'm getting is, regardless of which continent, a lot of these people are really nihilistic.

To be clear I'm not trying to deride them, I totally get it. This world is a shithole and it's hard to feel like it's getting better. Also these people are the offspring of Gen Xers who in both countries don't have the cheeriest outlooks (though their experiences are a little different).

Living expenses keep rising as wages stagnate and jobs are either hard to come by or don't pay nearly enough. Young people just do not have the financial flexibility to afford having a family or house, in many cases they've simply given up and live incredibly lonely lives.

These sound like things you'd hear on CBS but unfortunately it's common place in Japan too, probably in most of the rest of the world too.

A whole generation that's so disillusioned with the general state of the world that all they know is an inherent need to protect oneself and those in your immediate circle and ONLY them. Often by some variation of "securing the bag" and generating a fortune to retire on in as short amount of time as possible. No matter the means, stupidity or ethics behind it.

Oh also I know I've been throwing scans of Gundam characters into this post but rest assured that the show isn't like that. There are anime's that touch on loneliness and the modern 1st world country but this was purely an homage to old Gundam cards of the past.

Anyway let me just finish out this post that went way off the rails. I originally wanted to go more into comparing the lives of youths in the 70s in both cultures and countries but that required way more research that I realized I could never do it justice. So I hope the pretty cards and some incoherent rambling will suffice.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

Bat Blog Around: My Proudest Collecting Achievements

 If you're in this hobby long enough you've probably been able to do something.

Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing that came together in 5 minutes.
Maybe it was a long grind that took years to accomplish.
Something that when you sit down and think about it, makes you go "yeah, I did that".

So I wanted to try and put this BBA out there to give everyone a chance to talk about stuff they did in this hobby that made them very happy and gave them fulfillment.

Apologies if this topic's already been done and I just missed it.

I've got a top 3 and going in reverse order. For your own BBA's (should you choose to do this topic) feel free to change up how you'd like to present them.

Big thanks to Night Owl Cards and San Jose Fuji for trying to get the word out while Blogger's feeds decided to go AWOL.

#3. Built 8 Rainbows

My time as a Luis Torrens supercollector gave me a prime opportunity to build the 2013 Bowman Chrome rainbow and 2014 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Chrome rainbow of Torrens.

I also built the logoless rainbows offered by 2014 Leaf Metal Draft, 2014 Leaf Trinity, 2014 Panini Prizm Draft and 2014 Leaf Valiant.

I was so close to the master rainbow lol

The basic rainbow was done but never finished the master rainbow

On top of these 6 Torrens rainbows, my feel for prospects allowed me to swoop in on 2 more rainbows.

Thairo Estrada from 2014 Bowman Chrome Mini.

Everson Pereira from 2019 Panini Donruss Optic.

Also pretty sure I built one Anthony Davis rainbow back when I collected him but I can't remember. Consider that an unofficial #9 rainbow.

None of these rainbows are still with me but I felt very happy each and every time they were finished.

Every parallel that filled a gap was like a puzzle I was building where the pieces were scattered across the world and I had to assemble them myself like a scavenger hunt.

#2. Donated My Entire Luis Torrens Supercollection to Luis Torrens' Family

Reminiscing on the rainbows above did make me feel a bit nostalgic for a second but I didn't feel regretful for letting all those cards go.

All now under the ownership of the guy on these cards' family

Simply because I know they ended up in the best possible spot they otherwise could've, with the player's family.

I still remember exchanging DM's with Torrens' father and trying to simultaneously get updates on the packages arriving at the address I was given, while trying not to bother them too much considering they were likely busy with the unrest in Venezuela (to put it mildly).

It's funny, during the entire time I was collecting Torrens I was super worried about if Torrens had a safe American address to send this to if I ever wanted to, then after all this went down I learned that his wife is a real estate agent in Florida. I was worried about nothing.

The confirmation message from Torrens senior saying Torrens' aforementioned wife picked up the stuff from the post office was quite cathartic. Note: that pic above of the packages is what I took at the post office when I shipped them off. I don't know if the Torrens family took pics of the boxes on their end.

But all's well that ends well as they say.

And before we get to my proudest collecting achievement, here are three honorable mentions.

HM1: Got a Triple Autograph via TTM and IPs

These are tremendously hard to arrange. Luckily all three are prominent signers around the nostalgia circuit (mostly for people who want autographs of the 1978 Yankees).

HM2: Got a Dual Autograph via IPs

This dual wasn't as hard to get as the triple one but I still love this card dearly.

HM3: Completed the 2012 Sega Card Gen set and 2012 Sega Card Gen Rare Foil Yankees Team Set

The 408 card 2012 Sega Card Gen base set, which was the first and only set completion post I ever made on this blog, is no longer with me.

But boy was putting that together fun. I still have the foil Yankees above just because I still kept some stuff for myself.

Okay so with the honorable mentions done, let's get to my proudest collecting achievement.

#1. Built the 1909-11 T206 New York Highlanders Team Set*

*Reminder that my team set does not include every image variation, nor does it account for the card back brands

Probably just case of recency bias, compounded by how this is actually still in my possession but building the T206 New York Highlanders team set* got my collector blood pumping in a way I hadn't in years.

I've built Yankees team sets before but with all due respect to 1979 Topps, 2012 Sega Card Gen, 2012 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autographs and several prospect team sets, 1909-11 T206es just towers over every other Yankees team set by so so much.

What a weird and odd collecting journey I've taken. From hardcore prospecting to one of the most famous vintage sets in the collecting space.

Just endless accumulation where I'm kind of left with nothing by my own choice.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So anyway I've gone on long enough about my "achievements", I'm hopeful this gives people an opportunity to pump out their chests and share their stories.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.