A One Card Wonder

 Despite being the person many of you associate with Sega Card Gen, I've never taken as much time as I really should've to talk about the cards. There's a lot of cool stuff to be explored with that short lived but still fascinating set. Like how it was originally licensed by Upper Deck in 2009 but Topps took over in 2010. But the issue is that the posts range between things that absolutely cannot be covered in a single blogpost, or are too short to be worth devoting a blogpost to.

Well the flip-side to the latter is that those are easier to write so let's do one today.

Enerio del Rosario is (as far as I can tell) someone who had their ONLY card showing them as a major leaguer in the 2012 Sega Card Gen set. He has a few MiLB cards but no rookie cards or anything of him in the show.

In concept that's cool but in practice I think that might be hell. Imagine wanting to secure a ton of copies of your only baseball card as a big leaguer for your friends, family and loved ones who're all proud to know you made it to the top but it was only printed once and distributed across the world and written in a language that you can't read.

Or at least that's what I'd think EdR's thoughts are on his card. Assuming he even knows it exists at all.

By 2012 EdR had already had a few cups of coffee as a big leaguer since he debuted in 2010. But he unfortunately fell into reliever purgatory and since Topps wasn't able to put a rookie card logo on him he never got a card in a flagship product.

Add to it, EdR would never return to the big leagues after the 2012 season (not performing very well on the 2012 Astros will do that to you) so that was the end of that.

EdR did play in the Mexican League in 2013 but his career ended not long after that. Considering he'd been a pro since 2005 it was more like he was a very late bloomer who got a few chances to see if he could really stick near the end of a window that was quickly slamming shut.

Personally I think that it's at least great that his inclusion in the Card Gen set means he did get something to be recognized as a big leaguer. It provides a rare example of a one card wonder in one of the most exclusive sets ever.

None of these players are EdR, but this gif is still peak 2012 Astros

Remember, the Astros in 2012 were tanking and bad. Gone were solid guys who made the team respectable like Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn. They were running out warm bodies seeing which ones were worth keeping when they reached their arb-years, punting on the season and trying to secure a high draft pick to add to their rebuild.

I don't want to be mean but he's admittedly the type of forgotten, overall not very impressive (resume-wise) player who exemplified the rebuilding Astros. If nothing else including him is a perfect point-in-time thing for any hardcore Astros fans who watched that era.

Though to Sega and Topps' credit their selections in the 2012 Astros team set also included Jose Altuve and JD Martinez who would be very key names in the league in the years to come.

I still have a copy of EdR for myself as it's in a special cellophane pack that was distributed to beginners who were new to the game for free, and I'm kinda glad. Because every time I look at it and my now-tidier Card Gen collection, I know this card serves multiple special purposes just because of what it is and who's on it.

Also the way the card sums him up as a "Decent middle reliever" is really funny to me.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

What The? Huh?!

 

I was wondering if 2025 would be the first year in a while where I would go a long time without buying any sports cards. Then a few days into February I made my first sports card pick-up of 2025 which was that Troy Tulowitzki 2012 Sega Card Gen rare foil there.

There's a card shop called Trickster right across the hall from Mint Ikebukuro. Trickster doesn't deal with sports cards, they deal with cards used for card games but more importantly they also have a nice selection of cards used for arcade games. Which includes Sega Card Gen somehow like over a decade after the game went offline.

I wasn't expecting to find any of these rares in the wild, let alone Tulo's which was the last one I needed to finish the rare foil portion of the Colorado Rockies team set from 2012.

It's kind of nuts to think about how enough time has passed that now we know Todd Helton made it into the Hall of Fame while Carlos Gonzalez and Tulo just fell off the ballot immediately this year.

But as I mentioned before on this blog, when I think of the Rockies I think of the CarGo-Tulo era and it's finally nice to get them from the set I hold near and dear to me from my first serious days in the hobby.

Also picked up some Kancolle cards used for their arcade game which is still on-going. I don't play the games but these two are cute and the artwork is phenomenal (and I am a degenerate).

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

The First Team

 When I first blogged about the 2012 Sega Card Gen set it was as someone who had just finished the base set. One of the things that I never really got to go into was the process of building that set. How I made a ton of trips to my local arcades in Yokohama and not-so-local card shops in Shinjuku and Shibuya to build that 408 card behemoth.

At this point a lot of the details are hazy but I do remember one thing. The first team I assembled was the New York Yankees. At the time I was still a Yankees fan, and naturally I wanted to finish that team first. It wasn't too hard because that team was full of big names who were easy enough to find at shops, the only issue was that they were expensive.

Anyway fast forward to 2023 and the first team set I completed from the rare foil subset was also the New York Yankees.

You see during my trip to Japan I picked only two MLB cards but boy did those two cards count.

CC and Tex there helped me finish the seven card rare foil Yankees team set.

Along with them the set featured Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and Mariano Rivera. A real who's who of great players at the time.

I suppose if I expanded it to prize cards there's also the Hiroki Kuroda foil rare but that's neigh impossible to find or get, and it's not even in this 60-card rare foil checklist anyway.

So there we go, a decade in the making. Technically some other teams who only had one foil player were already done before the Yankees (like the New York Mets who only had David Wright or the Toronto Blue Jays who only had Jose Bautista) but I'm going to go with this because there were multiple foils. A actual challenge.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

Good Lots, a Set Collector's Best Friend

 For the second year in a row I was able to luck into a really really good lot of Sega Card Gen cards on Mercari.

I'm not a set collector, but I'm familiar enough to know that the set collector's best friend is buying cards in bulk. And boy did this latest one fill in a lot of holes in two aspects of 2012 Sega Card Gen.

The Ichiro above is an "EX" card. I used to think it stood for exchange but now my understanding is that it's short for extra since these are extra short printed cards beyond the base set.

This latest lot came with five of these EX cards. This is absolutely huge to me because these EX cards were cards that were distributed in all kinds of weird ways, and these five specifically were distributed with cases. You see there was a brief promo during the 2012 Sega Card Gen season where instead of a normal card you'd get a redemption card and then you called over someone who was working at the arcade, give them the redemption card and then pick one case out of eight different cases. Each case came with one unique EX card.

During my time playing 2012 SCG I lucked into three of them and turned them into Ichiro Suzuki, Junichi Tazawa and Ike Davis. I gave one of these cases to The Lost Collector a few years ago.

Thanks to this lot I was able to get Yu Darvish, Hisashi Iwakuma, Norichika Aoki and Justin Morneau. Even got a second copy of Ichiro out of it! Cards of Ichiro from the day he got traded to the New York Yankees will always be cool.

Now all that's left for these EX cards distributed with cases is Munenori Kawasaki.

And for the other EX cards that were distributed in different ways (ie contest prizes) there's still Carl Crawford, Francisco Rodriguez, Grady Sizemore, Shin-Soo Choo, Joe Nathan, Magglio Ordonez and Roy Oswalt. Oy vey.

For whatever it's worth I've never seen the Sizemore/Choo/Nathan/Ordonez/Oswalt cards out in the wild except for screenshots on the Card Gen website.

So I need eight more shortprints. Now I know how Night Owl felt when he was building the 2008 Heritage set.

But enough moping about what I don't have, time to get back to being happy about what just came in.

Like more rare foils! The Curtis Granderson, David Wright and Jose Bautista foils were dupes but there is no such thing as bad Card Gen dupes. Especially not for superstar foils. Given where my head's been this past season I'm particularly thrilled about the Carlos Gonzalez foil.

Of those foils, Stephen Strasburg is the only one from 2013. 2013 Sega Card Gen is a set I will never collect because I never played it (I missed it entirely), but similar to 2009-2011 SCG I do still appreciate any I can get.

The lot also came with a few base cards, like eight Japanese MLBers from 2012 and one Iwakuma from 2013. The 2012 cards were all dupes.

And finally this lot featured 11 non-Japanese MLBers, one which was an Adrian Beltre from 2013. Everything from 2012 is a dupe. The Clayton Kershaw was always a favorite of mine because of the Brooklyn throwback unis but I've come to also appreciate the Miguel Cabrera since it gives the same aura when I see old photographs of Ty Cobb or other players from the early 1900's just sitting around and with a stern face like he's analyzing everything going around him. Also the Yadier Molina is great because it's a rare backstop catch at the net shot. Which sounds like a collection Dime Box Nick would have.

All in all this lot provided me a ton of fun with four new EX cards, four new foils and two new base cards from 2013 to my collection, along with some nice cards to just have around even if they are dupes.

2012 Sega Card Gen, the set that keeps on giving all these years later and all these kilometers away.

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

Nearly Burned Out, Needed Cards to Heal

 Last week I was feeling severe burn out at work. I needed to really relieve some stress. I did a couple of things. I slept, exercised, drafted angry emails, became really passive aggressive with coworkers, vented on social media, anything to keep me sane in the moment. At the risk of being over dramatic that brief moment was pretty overwhelming and I needed a coping mechanism bad.

The most dangerous but also what ended up being my favorite outlet was just going hogwild on watch-list hits on eBay.

This Kyle Freeland 2014 Bowman Chrome blue refractor autograph was on my want list for weeks. Mine.

A Todd Helton autograph in general was on my want list for months, and after using rewards points to shave off most of the price, I managed to bring it down to $7. Solid deal for a future Hall of Famer. Mine.

Okay I don't want to repeat that same description ad nauseam so here's a bunch of scans.

In some ways this is basically a smorgasbord of stuff I've been known to collect. Just missing Luis Torrens and some Yankees prospects somewhere.

This is also just the baseball stuff.

Also quick shout-out to my former local card shop American Legends. I was in my old neighborhood for errands and stopped by to purchase supplies. I went ahead and purchased the T206 Chase in that store too. It reminded me how underrated it is when you're able to physically hold and inspect the card I want before committing to buying. Also y'know, not refreshing the tracking number every other hour and being worried the USPS is going to send to the wrong address or something.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

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.

An Old Friend

 2018, the last time I added new Sega Card Gen cards to my collection was 2018.

Sega Card Gen was at one point the cards people associated with me the most, then came Luis Torrens and a bunch of other things I grew interested in.

The now-defunct arcade game brand was the first base set I ever completed back in 2014, and I have fond memories of it. Some collectors might even remember getting these in a trade back from me when I was first starting to trade (or traded at all).

Since Sega Card Gen got discontinued in 2013, it's been increasingly harder and harder to find these cards. They just did not get enough time be widely distributed enough that they can be found easily. But once in a while you'll get lucky with a large lot. Which is where the Darvish above came from and where a lot of the cards I'm about to show below came from.

The key card in this entire lot was this Hideki Matsui rare. Back when Card Gen was active they'd host competitions at arcades and whoever won got these cool special rares as prizes.

The backs are special with goldish-yellowish tint and have congrats written on them. I'm not sure how much different these cards fared in the game (if anyone ever tried I wouldn't know), but I doubt it made much of a difference.

During the tournaments they also gave away these sealed packs of special EX (think like shortprints) cards for cards outside of the base set. There are a small handful of EX cards I could never track down like Magglio Ordonez or Shoo Shin Choo and though it is possible they're in these packs, I don't really want to run the risk of getting dupes of the few EX cards I do have. So they remained sealed. For now.

Accompanying the prize card, the consolation packs and the Yu Darvish were a bunch of base cards. They were all dupes and will be part of future Zappings and I won't be showing them (it'll be up to their new owners whether or not they get blog-time). But to round out this post I'll share the two additional foil rares in this lot, starting with Matt Kemp.

It feels like it was forever ago when we last saw Kemp in a Dodgers jersey. Though he got a huge contract from the Dodgers that more or less turned into an albatross, what the Dodgers managed to do in not only moving his contract but getting actual prospects in return for him would set the tone for how they'd operate going forward. Not to mention that the prospects LAD got back for Kemp from Cincinnati included Jeter Downs and Josiah Gray. Downs would later be part of the package sent to Boston for Mookie Betts and Gray would be part of the package sent to Washington for Trea Turner and Max Scherzer. Andrew Friedman folks, he's always four steps ahead.

And finally Prince Fielder. Man, the way these names just teleport me back to the late-2000's/early-2010's is something.

Fielder was at his peak in 2012 before things went downhill for him rather quickly, with him eventually having to retire in 2016 for health concerns.

That concludes my first Sega Card Gen mailday in forever and likely my last one for another long while. It's always nice to look back on these, back when I was first in the hobby and everything seemed fun and exciting.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.