Randy Bass will be appearing in an Owners League TV commercial that will be shown in the Kanto and Kansai regions, beginning on 9/10 (two spots, one 15 seconds long and the other 30 seconds long).  Bass, and 5 other foreign players that made their mark in the NPB, will be included in the 3rd set of Owners League cards, set to hit store shelves on 9/16.

Randy Bass' card: front and back

Shots from the commercial: 4Gamer.net and Oricon Style

With all that's been going on, I completely forgot to look into what was going to happen to the Calbee Pro Yakyu Chips this year.

In looking at the official Calbee site, I see the chips were delayed and will only be available in the Kansai (beginning on 4/11) and Hokkaido (4/18) regions.  As of 3/22 (when the Calbee page was lasted updated) there is no scheduled release date for the Tohoku, Kanto, and Koshietsu regions.

Managed to grab a can of Georgia Black today.  Here's what I got:

Checklist

From Other Cards

Two Cards - Front

From Other Cards

Two Cards - Back

From Other Cards

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but if I purchase any more, I'll be sure to post them.

The Fighters announced the start of their Victory Card set (to go on sale on the 25th).

What, exactly, is the Victory Card set?

For every game the Fighters win this year, they will print up a special baseball card.  The picture side will feature one key player from the game;  the back of the card will contain a summary of the game along with the final score and any other pertinent data from that particular game.

That means there is no set number of cards and the size of the set will only be limited by the number of games the Fighters' win.

The set for the entire year will cost 7,980 yen (includes shipping, packaging, and tax).  The first 4,000 people to order the set will also get a folder for the cards.

Cards purchased by the month will cost 105 yen per card.  Shipping will cost an additional 160 yen.

Interested fans can also purchase the folder for 1,890 yen.

It should also be noted that purchases can only be made via credit card.

Beginning on 3/23, cans of Georgia Original will come with two baseball cards.  Supplies are limited and cards will only be handed out when you make you purchase at convenience store.

There are 30 60 cards in the entire set.

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I may try purchasing a can or two to see what the cards are like.

Second Pack

From Calbee 2010

Third Pack

From Calbee 2010

I thought I'd start sharing the Calbee baseball cards I tend to collect during the course of the year.  Here's two cards from the first pack of chips I bought.

From Calbee 2010

The Calbee 2010 Pro Yakyu Chips, Series 1 will go on sale beginning March 8th.

The checklist (in Japanese) for Series 1 is available at the official Calbee site.

I went to the store the other day and noticed that the 2009 Calbee Pro Yakyu Chips were on sale again and picked up a couple of packs. And it looks like they've gone back to 2 cards instead of 1 (with a slight price increase I think).

Here's what the packaging looks like this year:

According to the official website, they went on sale on March 9th. Here's the checklist for the first series. If I have some time, I'll try to translate that for everyone.

Incidentally, here are the cards I got in my first batch:

021 Kensuke Tanaka
037 Naoto Watanabe
040 Takeshi Yamasaki
071 Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi
090 Shigenobu Shima
093 Hiroyasu Tanaka

The 2008 Pro Yakyu Chips went on sale on March 24th. I have yet to see any in the stores I've been to, but then I had a hard time tracking them down last year in Tokyo as well. Looks like I'll have to stock up again when I visit my GF in Sendai. I'm not really sure why many stores in Tokyo don't seem to carry them. Maybe I'm not just not looking in the right places?

The first series features 166 cards: 96 regular cards, 12 team stat cards, 2 league champion cards, 4 Climax series cards, 4 Nippon series cards, 4 checklist cards, 24 top player cards, and 20 special box cards.

I will, of course, be once again on the prowl for Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka cards. It appears that there are no regular cards for Darvish and Tanaka in the first series, but they both have 3 non-regular cards. Guess I'll be going after these 6 cards.