Friday, January 04, 2008

Baseball Card Fukubukuro, Part 2

I have two baseball card posts to make, but this is the one I meant to make several days ago and didn't.

See, I have a new bad habit now. Rather than spending too much on random packs of cards, now I've been spending too much on random BAGS of random packs of cards. These are called "Fukubukuro", which means "lucky bag". At the Mint card shop, they basically say "Pay 1000 yen, get 3000 yen worth of random card packs". Which is true, but since you can't pick them, it can get interesting. So you get TWO levels of "open it and see what you got!!", first for the packs in the fukubukuro and then for the cards in the packs. Fun!

My first time, the bag had some Dragons and Hawks packs and some Draft Story packs. My second time, the bag had three Seibu Lions packs, one Hanshin Tigers, one Hiroshima Carp, and three Touch the Game 2006 packs. My third time... it had the exact same thing as the second time, since I got it a week later and the bag was the same color. I'm holding off for a few weeks before buying another one I think.


Second Fukubukuro, pre-pack opening. Whee.


At least I'm spending less overall -- I only buy cards once per week and if I only buy one fukubukuro, that's 1000 yen. Could be worse.

Anyway, my first Carp pack was vaguely exciting, with a Shinji Sasaoka reflector card and an Eishin Soyogi team card, and a Maeda Spotlight; it might have been one of the best packs in my first Fukubukuro. My second one wasn't quite as exciting but still wasn't too bad -- a Koichi Ogata title holder card, a Shigenobu Shima reflector card, and a card for Jeff Livesey-coach, which isn't quite as cool as a Marty Brown card, but not terrible either. I'm really not that excited about the Carp as a team in general, which is why it's just not all that exciting to open the packs. But, I do think it's a nice set. I did want a Saitoh Yuuki card :)


Hiroshima Carp - two packs


The Tigers packs really annoyed me. You know, I didn't think it was possible to get doubles of a card IN THE SAME PACK, but apparently... no, okay, so what happened is that I got a Naohisa Sugiyama normal card AND a Sugiyama reflector card in the sae pack. It's not a double exactly, but seriously, the most exciting card in that first pack was the "Good luck Kei Igawa!!" card. The second pack was much better, with an Okada-kantoku, and a "Kyuji Special" card of Kyuji Fujikawa, and a Makoto Imaoka reflector car, and normal cards of ex-Fighter Itsuki Shoda, and of ex-Pirate Ryan Vogelsong.


Hanshin Tigers - two packs


The next big set of crap I had to look at was the Seibu Lions team sets. Nevermind that I don't particularly like the Lions to begin with, this set kind of made me sad. I think the "Shining" cards are nice, and the Lion Heart ones are kind of cool, but I got a bazillion doubles in just 6 packs, which is not reassuring. Also, I did not get a normal Hideaki Wakui card, which also made me sad.

First pack, best cards: Kataoka reflector, normal Hiroyuki Nakajima
Second pack, best cards: Toru Hosokawa, Kazuhiro Wada, team check list
Third pack, best cards: Lion Hearts for Fukuchi and Liefer, mascot card
Fourth pack, best cards: normal Kataoka card
Fifth pack, best cards: normal Gissel, Onodera; Lion Hearts of Wakui
Sixth pack, best card: Nakajima Lion Heart card -- already a double. Oi.

Just really not that exciting. I did get a Ginjiro Sumitani card in there somewhere too, and doubles of the team checklist and several of the Lion Hearts, but eh.


Seibu Lions - six packs


Last to open from the Fukubukuro packs was the "Touch the Game" cards. These are super-expensive and I don't entirely understand why they're supposed to be so good. They're really thick cards and they have pretty pictures, I guess, and most of the players on them are superstars, basically. I'm not angry that I have them but I doubt I would ever buy these packs on my own, which is part of what makes the Fukubukuro so cool -- getting to experience these other cards. And every pack DID have plenty of exciting players in it, so that was nice at least.

First pack: Darvish portrait, Masahide Kobayashi card
Second pack: Dragonbutts. Nakata portrait, cards of Asakura and Kawakami
Third pack: Pitcherlicious. Iwase, Wakui, Uehara
Fourth pack: Fun. Hichori, Fukumori, Kroon, Ramirez
Fifth pack: Yagi, Shinjo, and Yoshinobu Takahashi
Sixth pack: Hair. Daisuke Miura, and a Kenta Kurihara portrait


Touch the Game - six packs


I'm including these here because I also bought three packs of the Rookie Edition lately. I really just want to collect one from each team since they have the "new player picture" on the back. Though the cards are really cute too, so it's not all bad. They have the incoming players, and then some 2006 rookies as well, in action. Plus I got another Naomichi Donoue card, which is always exciting. I'm only missing one team now, and that's Rakuten. I wonder if the entire set is rarer because of Masahiro Tanaka?


Rookie edition - some loose cards, some booked cards


My next card post is going to talk about the neat series of cards I got yesterday at Mint, as well as a rant about the Back to the 70's card set, perhaps.

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