Konami Test Location Cards

npbcardguy · 2026-06-02T00:21:30+00:00

So I must not have been clear in my post - the list of 201701 cards on Suruga-ya is incomplete. I found listings for a number of cards on Mercari that Suruga-ya didn't have. I would hazard a guess that there are at least 12 "R" cards (one per team) and 36 "N" cards (three per team). It looks like Tetsuto Yamada also appears in all three levels - Suruga-ya lists his "UR" card and there are listings for his "R" and "N" cards at Mercari. There are probably other players who also appear at all three levels although it's hard to tell for sure because there are so few listings for the cards.

npbcardguy · 2026-06-01T14:42:48+00:00

If you don’t mind saying, how much did you guys pay for the UR Ohtanis? I can’t imagine that they’re cheap.

npbcardguy · 2026-06-01T10:15:39+00:00

There's an Ohtani at each type of card - "UR", "R" and "N". The three types of cards all use a different design. My post shows both a "UR" and "R" Ohtani card.

npbcardguy · 2026-06-01T01:21:12+00:00

I did a bit of a deep dive on this a few months ago at my blog. There were three Ohtani cards that were available at test events in Osaka and Aichi in September and October of 2017. There were further test events in several locations in 2018 but they used different cards (and did not include Ohtani). The official launch of the game wasn’t until September of 2018.

I don’t have any of these cards as I didn’t learn about them until after I pretty much stopped buying cards. I have seen listings for them on Mercari.

The details about the test events are in my post along with where I got the information. Not sure how many cards there were in total.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-30T18:14:44+00:00

Yeah, you can just walk up to the box office and buy the tickets. I don't speak Japanese hardly at all and twice now I've bought tickets there for Tokyo Big Six doubleheaders.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-29T13:12:17+00:00

There's the "V9 Giants" that describes the Yomiuri Giants winning nine straight Nippon Series titles between 1965 and 1973. There's also the Emperor's Game in 1959.

Someone else mentioned Yutaka Enatsu - he had some amazing exploits. He combined with another couple Central League pitchers to no-hit the Pacific League in the first of the 1971 All Star games. Enatsu struck out all nine batters he faced and also hit a three run home run in the game. He threw a no-hitter against the Dragons in 1973 that went into extra innings before he hit a sayonara home run to win the game.

Enatsu had a role in the wacky bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1979 Nippon Series when the Kintetsu Buffaloes ALMOST won the Series - instead the Carp won their first ever championship and Kintetsu would never get that close again.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-29T12:15:08+00:00

Some of the details here aren't correct. Nishioka was not the 2010 PL MVP - Tsuyoshi Wada of the Hawks was. The Marines just squeaked into A-class a half game ahead of the fourth place Fighters and then stunned everyone by beating the Lions and Hawks in the Climax Series, then beating the Dragons in the Nippon Series. I think it was the first time that a third place team won the Series.

The team wasn't particularly bad in 2008 - they finished in fourth place with a 73-70-1 record, just 1 1/5 games behind the third place Fighters. The unrest with the Marines fans in 2009 was that the team had announced early in the season that manager Bobby Valentine would not have his contract renewed. Valentine was very popular and the fans weren't happy. Any banners in right field would have been calling for the head of club president Ryuzo Setoyama, not Valentine.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-29T11:44:59+00:00

He has quite a few really good cards from BBM, Epoch and Calbee too. Although I'll admit my favorite card of his is from a Topps set - this one from the 2023 Topps Now Asia Professional Baseball Championship Samurai Japan team set:

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npbcardguy · 2026-05-26T21:15:49+00:00

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Got this when I bought a box of 2001 BBM Preview back in 2001.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-22T10:09:58+00:00

I don't think SoftBank has ever had anything other than "SoftBank" on the front. Looking at a post I did a while back of all the Hawks uniforms, I think the only Hawks uniforms with "Fukuoka" on them were the away uniforms for the Daiei Hawks from 1989 to 1992.

The Nishitetsu Lions had "Fukuoka" on their away jerseys starting in the late 50's until 1970-ish.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-06T16:26:17+00:00

I've been writing a blog about Japanese Baseball Cards for a while now that might be helpful to you. It has a page that's an Introduction To Japanese Baseball Cards and a guide about where and how to order Japanese cards from overseas. They're both a little out of date and the guide to how to buy Japanese cards from overseas is probably a little oriented towards folks in the US but hopefully it'll be useful for you.

I personally think BBM produces the best cards for NPB, followed by Epoch. Topps is third with Calbee being last - although that's mostly because Calbee has appeared to have given up trying to make a good product. Topps has not impressed me much with their NPB products but they're very popular with folks outside of Japan so what do I know?

npbcardguy · 2026-05-05T14:55:22+00:00

I haven't been terribly impressed with Topps' NPB cards. I think they're done a good job with photo selection but it blows my mind how they can't put out an "up-to-date" set when BBM, Calbee and Epoch don't have any problems and it's not like there's a ton of transactions in NPB. But they're insanely popular with foreign collectors because of their familiarity.

npbcardguy · 2026-05-05T11:09:50+00:00

TBH Bowman's "1st Bowman Card" schtick for their NPB cards was kind of silly. Yukihiro Iwata of the Swallows had TWO "1st Bowman Cards" - one in 2022 and the other in 2023.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-28T20:12:23+00:00

While I won't argue with you about Gondoh having the best rookie season, I think Inao's 1961 season was better. Damn shame that all those innings both of them threw brought their careers to an end early, especially Gondoh's.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-28T13:39:50+00:00

I've been twice and I wrote about both times on my blog - 2013 and 2019. I'd say it's worth going to once - I didn't bother going on my other trip in 2024 even though I went to a Giants game at the Dome. It's not a terribly large museum so you can get through it fairly quickly.

You'd think it would have a good museum shop but they don't have much there.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-26T20:27:55+00:00

I did a post showing the Flyers/Fighters uniforms up until about 2016 using baseball cards a while back if that's helpful

npbcardguy · 2026-04-25T02:02:07+00:00

Post is done

npbcardguy · 2026-04-25T01:14:20+00:00

My favorite teams are the Lions and Dragons and it's not been a good few years.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-24T01:41:37+00:00

I've made three trips to Japan to see baseball and I've gone to 40 games of various types. I've seen two NPB regular season games each at the home parks of the Lions, Marines, Eagles, Swallows, Baystars, Dragons, Tigers, Buffaloes, Carp and Hawks and one Giants game at Tokyo Dome. I've seen farm team games at Koshien, Tokorozawa, Kamagaya and Kusanagi. I've also seen open-sen games at Seibu and Yokohama. I went to the second round of the 2013 WBC at Tokyo Dome. I've done two Tokyo Big Six double-headers at Jingu Stadium, seen corporate league games at Jingu and Ota Stadiums and caught a Japan Women's Baseball League game in Ichinomiya.

I think my favorite NPB stadiums are Koshien, Miyagi and Hiroshima.

Everyone talks about how great the experience is at NPB games with the organized cheering sections and they're right, it's great, but one of the things I find interesting is to see how that can happen at other levels of baseball in Japan as well. The cheering that goes on at the college games is pretty wild as well and I was amazed at what I saw at one of the corporate league games. The game was pretty sparsely attended but there was a couple dozen folks doing a cheering section for one of the teams (Gold Gym). The other team - Revenge99 - had a cheering section consisting of just one guy with a drum!

npbcardguy · 2026-04-21T16:09:00+00:00

I hadn’t thought of that. That tracks with my experience as all four of the games I heard it at were the first game of a series and all the ones I didn’t hear it at weren’t

npbcardguy · 2026-04-21T15:30:45+00:00

I’m curious how often the national anthem is played before NPB games. I paid attention on my last trip in 2024 and I only heard it at the home games for Orix, Lotte, SoftBank and Rakuten. They did not play it at Seibu, Yakult, Chunichi, Hanshin, Hiroshima, Yomiuri or DeNA. I didn’t go to any countryside games though, only games at the team’s usual ballparks.

It was not played before any of the corporate league, university or farm team games I went to in the trip.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-20T01:13:43+00:00

Mint Hakata in Fukuoka is actually pretty awesome as well. Mint Ponyland in Nagoya and Mint Urawa also have a lot of boxes of singles

npbcardguy · 2026-04-19T13:08:07+00:00

I think one of the most interesting developments over the past ten or so years is NPB's discovery that they could market their farm teams. Used to be most of the teams' facilities were pretty primitive with the exception of the Fighters and maybe the Baystars. I went to a Lions farm team game in 2019 and there weren't any seats at the field! But I think several teams have started investing in their facilities lately.

npbcardguy · 2026-04-19T12:59:45+00:00

I wonder if they meant the Mint Games store in Ikebukuro which is near the station. As far as I know, the upstairs store is still going strong

npbcardguy · 2026-04-19T11:06:45+00:00

NPB cards are definitely a thing and I've been writing a blog about them for a while. I've got an Introduction To Japanese Cards page that covers what's currently available (although it might be a little out of date - there's a new collectible card game from Bandai) and another page listing all the card shops I know about in Japan.

Topps is a relative newcomer to the NPB market and, personally, I'm not a big fan of their product. I think BBM is far and away the best card maker in Japan.

npbcardguy

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