Domo Arigato: GCRL and Junior Junkie

When I came home from work on Wednesday, I had two sports card "care packages" waiting for me.  The first one was courtesy of Jim over at Garvey Cey Russell Lopes and included five new Ichiros for my collection.

These five make it a total of 68 different Ichiro Suzuki's in my Japanese athlete binder.  The 2008 Topps card is one of my personal favorites because of the design and photo selection.  He also included a nice 1966 Topps card of the Kansas City Athletics' pitcher... Don Mossi.

This guy definitely deserves to be in the cardboard hall of fame for his photogenic ears.

The second package had this awesome trademark drawn on the outside of the package:

Recognize it?  It's our very own... T.J. a.k.a The Junior Junkie.  I noticed my zip code on his blog a few days ago and wondered if I was one of the guys he was talking about.

The package included these 23 cards for my Japanese athlete binder:

I was surprised to find out that seventeen of these guys were brand new to my binder, including two very cool Akinori Otsuka #'d refractors.

Thanks Jim and T.J!  You know the routine.  I'll dig up some stuff for your collections and have them in the mail in the near future.

Happy Friday and sayonara!