The Japanese Jackie

Back on September 1st, 1964... Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese baseball player to play in a MLB game.  His time with the San Francisco Giants only lasted a little over a season, but his place in baseball history will hopefully be remembered forever.

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Murakami back in 2015 and I have slowly been building a collection of his cards ever since.  Last month, I purchased two autographed inserts of him off of eBay...

2025 Topps First Pitch #FP-2

This card captures Murakami throwing out the first pitch at Oracle Park on May 17th, 2024 in celebration of the 60th anniversary of his MLB debut.

2024 Topps Japan Edition 1989 #89J-48

This card features a cool koi border design and was inserted into 2024 Topps Japan Edition packs.  I'm not 100% sure, but based on the scoreboard it looks like Mashi posed for this photo at Wrigley Field either in 1964 or 1965.

Both of these cards were part of auctions that I won for a combined price of $64.09 ($26.19/$29 + $12 shipping + $4.74 tax).  Before bidding, I researched CGC x JSA pricing... which begins at around $15 per card if you're submitting items in bulk.  With that knowledge, I was very happy to win both of these auctions.

After playing for the Giants in 1965, he was ordered by the NPB commissioner to return to the Nankai Hawks for the 1966 season.  Thirty years later, Hideo Nomo became the second Japanese player (born in Japan) to cross the Pacific to play in the MLB.  Since then over seventy guys have followed their lead including one of the greatest contact hitters in the 21st century and one of the greatest players currently in the game.

Each year, it's exciting to see who will follow in Murakami, Nomo, Suzuki, and Ohtani's footsteps.  This past season fans watched guys like Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, and Tatsuya Imai make their MLB debuts.

Kenny (over at Torren' Up Cards) recently sent me ten pack of 2026 Stadium Club NPB.  It'll be interesting to see if any of these guys eventually come over to the states to play:

Some of you might recognize Tsuyoshi Shinjo (in the #3 spot).  He spent a few seasons with the Mets and Giants in the early 2000's.  These days he's managing the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

2026 Stadium Club NPB #139

Can't say that I recognize the other nine guys, but maybe one of them will be the next Hideki Matsui or Masahiro Tanaka.  Only time will tell.  Until then, I'll keep collecting cards of NPB players in hopes that one day I'll get to see them play at Oracle Park or Sutter Health Park.

Thank you Kenny for donating these Stadium Club cards to my collection.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

Flea Market Finds #192: Nothing Too Crazy

Sorry for the lack of flea market related posts.  It's not for a lack of trips or even purchases.  The big change is the amount of time I dedicate to writing posts... which has significantly declined.  Over the summer, I was focusing on itemizing and organizing my collection.  And the start of a new school year is always hectic.  The good news is things begin to stabilize in October.

The bad news is card related deals are drying up faster than ever.  That's why I've started targeting other items while walking around the flea market.  Two of these items are featured in today's post and were purchased this past Saturday at the De Anza Flea Market.

Here's what I purchased...

Purchase #1:  Pair of Sets  $1

I'm officially at the point in the hobby where I get excited to find cheap overproduced retail box sets from the 80's.  I have purchased stuff from this vendor a few times over the years, but like other card vendors... his prices are becoming unreasonable.

1988 Topps Woolworth Baseball Highlights Sets (x2)

However he had a plethora of these 33ct. box sets... and was asking a buck each or $20 for a case of 24.  He didn't hide the fact that he wanted to dump them, so I offered him a dollar for two and he accepted.  One of them will go into my boxed set collection.  The other will be opened up, possibly featured in a future post, and the singles will either go into player collections or added to care packages.

Purchase #2:  Cassette Tapes  $8

Outside of trading cards, LP's and cassette tapes are my favorite things to look for at flea markets.  Unfortunately, the competition is stiff in this area as well.  Luckily I found a guy with some tapes I was interested in and he had reasonable prices.  $3 each or two for $5.

I found three...

U2 Live Under A Blood Red Sky

I went through a U2 phase back in the 80's where they were one of my favorite bands.  Never actually owned this album, CD, or cassette... but I recognize most of these songs.  I was very happy to add this to the collection.

Steve Miller Band Greatest Hits 1974-78

My brothers are over a decade older than me, so we weren't exactly close when I was a kid.  In fact, they were more like uncles than siblings.  But they were definitely the cool kind who exposed me to classic rock of the 70's.  I've had this CD in my collection for decades.  My brother gave me his LP a few years ago.  I'm pretty sure I owned the cassette tape back in the 80's.  If not... I own a copy now.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Coming Out Of Their Shells

Never knew this cassette tape existed, but as soon as I saw it... I wanted it.  Based on a YouTube video, it looks like you could purchase a these at Pizza Hut for $3.99 back in 1990.  I'll never actually listen to it, but if I ever build a TMNT display in my office... I'll add this to it.

Purchase #3:  Charlie Hustle Autograph  $5

Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  There's no guarantee that this signature is real.  And even if it is... his autographs are far from rare.  I don't care.  I wasn't going to pass this up for five bucks.

1984 Gateway First Day Cover

This first day cover silk cachet commemorates Pete's 4,000th hit on April 13th, 1984.

The vendor who had this had an entire table filled with old magazines, programs, and photos.  While flipping through the stacks, I came across a sleeve containing a few different commemorative covers.  Only two were signed.  The other featured Len Barker's signature.  Rose was worth the risk, but not Barker.

Purchase #4:  Dollar Cards  $2

After digging through the programs and purchasing the Rose, I started digging through the guy's dollar box.  This was one of those boxes where cards are literally tossed into it... half of which were completely unprotected.

Sitting on top was a small stack of 70's Hostess cards... which caught my eye.  Unfortunately there were poorly cut and the biggest name I saw was Davey Lopes.  But I did find this 90's parallel:

1993-94 Stadium Club First Day Issue #186

Karl Malone wasn't a good father and if you ask Magic or Kobe... he wasn't a good teammate.  But he was one heck of a power forward.  Not gonna lie.  When I saw this card in a heavily worn penny sleeve, my eyes lit up.  Anyone else miss the days when parallels weren't pulled from every pack?

I'm glad I continued to dig, because I found an even cooler card:  

1976 Kellogg's #19

Unfortunately this card was floating around in the box without a penny sleeve.  However somehow the cardboard gods spared it from any cracks.  The back is pretty stained though:

I'm not going to complain.  I'll buy uncracked 70's Kellogg's cards of any familiar name for a dollar all day long.

Purchase #5:  Box of Old Postcards  $20

Another side collection I have been building are vintage postcards... especially one depicting places I've been to.  I haven't counted, but I'd estimate you're staring at two to three hundred postcards.  I flipped through a couple of stacks, compared them to some purchases I have made online, and figured it was well worth the price.

If you'd like to see some in a future post, comment down below.  If not I'll eventually sort and file these away.

Purchase #6:  A Wood Box  $5

Last month, I saw this gentleman with a bunch of affordable handmade boxes.  I stopped at his booth to see if he'd be willing to make some custom boxes for my card collection.  Unfortunately he was busy with several customers, so I never got a chance to ask.

I was happy to see him again this month. but he doesn't do custom builds.  I pulled out a top loader and discovered that it fit perfectly sideways in this particular design.  I purchased one.  Haven't figured out how I'll use it.  But if I do within the next month... maybe I'll grab a few more.

Well that wraps up my most recent trip to the flea market.  Nothing too crazy, but I found some baseball cards to purchase.  That always counts as a win.

Positive or negative... I'd love to hear your thoughts on my finds.

Until next time...

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

The Eras Post

Heat waves suck.  Blog Bat-Arounds rule.

Yesterday Mother Nature turned up the heat in my area and doesn't plan to cool things off for at least the next four or five days.  My happy place is in the mid 50's to mid 60's.  I can tolerate temps into the mid 70's, but anything in the 80's becomes miserable.  Today the temperature will peak in the high 90's.  Not cool (both literally and figuratively).

But what is really cool is when bloggers support each other's Blog Bat-Arounds.  It's been awesome reading everyone's contributions to Kenny's which asked people to write about their proudest collecting achievements.

On Friday, Matt over at Cards Over Coffee started another one.

Taylor Swift had The Eras Tour.  Bloggers have The Eras BBA.

The challenge if you choose to accept it is to discuss your favorite era of card collecting and show off any recent additions to these collections.  I chose the word "challenge", because it was way too hard to pick a single era for my response.  On any given day, my favorite card collecting era will likely come from one of these three...

A.  The 80's

I'm going to start off with the decade where I officially dove into card collecting.  I absolutely loved opening packs and looking for rookie cards of guys like Ron Kittle, Vince Coleman, and Mike Greenwell.  When I was a kid, they were easily my favorite thing to collect.  These days you can add in regional issues like 7-11 discs, Granny Goose A's, and Mother's Cookies SGA sets into the mix.  Yup.  I love the 80's.

I couldn't think of any 80's regional issues that I've purchased recently, but here's a Roger Clemens rookie card I purchased on eBay back in April:

1985 Donruss #273

You may (or may not) remember the 1985 Donruss factory set I picked up at a flea market back in January for $15.  Unfortunately, it was missing the Clemens.  It took a few months, but I finally completed the set for $6.81 ($4.99 + $1.82 shipping/tax).

B.  The 90's

As Matt pointed out in his post, the most innovative cards were produced during this decade.  It was card companies competing against each other at its finest.  Thanks to the 90's we have cards made out of acetate, metal, wood, and leather.  The shiniest parallels came out of that decade.  And that was the decade that introduced pack pulled autographs and game-used memorabilia.  Plus there were things like holograms, die-cuts, embossed cardboard, Dufex technology, etched foil, tree ornaments, and a bunch of other things I'm forgetting in the moment.  Yup.  90's cards were innovative and awesome.

Unfortunately a lot of these cool 90's cards are skyrocketing in popularity and prices, so I haven't purchased any from eBay or at any card shows.  Luckily, I started reorganizing my collection over the summer and I came across hundreds of cool inserts that were hidden in boxes.  Here are three that I figured Matt might appreciate and fit this segment of the post:

1999-00 Topps Gallery of Heroes #GH6

1997-98 Skybox Z-Force Zensations #18ZN

1997 Fleer Metal Universe Marvel Metal #1

I did find some cool baseball inserts too, but I like to showcase some basketball and football every now and then.

C.  The 70's

One of my favorite things to collect are 70's lenticular Kellogg's cards.  I feel like my dream flea market find involves stumbling across a collection of non-cracked Kellogg's cards at a reasonable price.  It's not likely to happen, but this collector can dream.  Those cards alone make this era a personal favorite.

But I also love collecting 70's cards of athletes I grew up hearing about on television and reading about in magazines.  My two binders dedicated to 70's baseball are arguably the ones that I flip through the most on a regular basis.  I just love staring at classic designs like 1972 and 1975 Topps and flipping through pages filled with The Swingin' A's.  Yup.  The 70's rocked.

I rarely add any 70's Kellogg's cards to my collection these days.  Like 90's stuff... they're too expensive for my budget.  It's even less common for me to share a card I purchased at a flea market before I feature it in a Flea Market Find post.  However I picked up this lovely lenticular at the De Anza Flea Market yesterday:

1976 Kellogg's #19

I have a few Flea Market Find posts that I need to hammer out.  But the next one I publish will feature this weekend's haul since you've gotten a sneak peek.

Thank you Matt for starting another round of Blog Bat-Arounds!  I hope others will join in on the fun.  The more, the merrier.  Reading your responses will make this heat wave I'm suffering through more bearable.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!