There is a dude on eBay who sells SEGA Card-Gen cards from time to time, and he recently put up a huge amount of stuff from the 2012 set. These are such cool cards and I grabbed a whole stack of them. He had a lot of role players and semi-stars for $1-2 apiece, and I grabbed some of my favorites from that list. He also combines shipping, so it was a flat $3.00 in shipping and handling to get all the cards I ordered from Japan to my house in Idaho. I did splurge a bit on one card, paying several dollars to get R.A. Dickey's 2012 issue, but the bulk of my purchases came from the $0.99 auctions.
I was able to get representatives from a great many teams, including these two Athletics. I guess I might as well be an A's fan, because I sure do like their team colors on cardboard, and Oakland players make up about half of my fantasy rosters this year. I was surprised that Suzuki was on the 'cheap' list, as the pricing structure on these cards seems to really favor players of Japanese descent and catchers, as well as the usual Yankee-centric list of superstars. I am not sure if catchers are really popular in Japan or if the catcher position is unusually valuable in the video game associated with these cards. I am glad I was able to pick up his card and also the card of Coco Crisp, who is becoming a PC player for me.
I also grabbed up a large portion of the Astros team set. It turned out that a couple of these were doubles, but that's what happens when your collection is scattered all over creation. This group is notable in that none of the 5 players I picked up are with the Astros organization anymore.
You can see that these guys have some pretty pedestrian ratings, with only one exceptional number in the lot (17 for Bourgeois' Speed). Every game needs a beginner team, I suppose.
Carlos Lee has got a pretty good facial expression here. It's almost like he's aware of the camera pointed at him. I would later get another copy of this card by way of Zippy Zappy, who is the blogosphere's #1 font of knowledge about all things Card-Gen.
I am pretty sure that a chili dog and a vicious rat live in Myers' goatee thing. That beard is scary. Maybe he hides hair gel (or bacon grease) in it for use in doctoring up the ball.
Aramis Ramirez appears to be celebrating something here, but the expression on his face suggests that he just laid down a stinky fart-bomb and is on his way to cropdust the whole team.
There are quite a few players in this set who have the logo of their new team on the card but are pictured in their old team's uniform. I don't mind it too much, as it is probably better than a bunch of airbrushed/photo-shopped pictures.
I thought that this was a pretty nice bunch of pitchers, and we got a nice range of photos between the three of them, too. Only one guy is shown in the act of throwing a pitch. I can't pronounce Samardzija's name, but he's got quite the hairstyle going on. His locks aren't nearly as luscious as Troy Polamalu's, but they're pretty good for a baseball player.
The game designers think highly of these three guys, too, as they have some of the highest ratings we've seen so far in this post. Samardzija even gets a red number on his card for Speed, although Wood and Garza have better all-around numbers. Man, I wish this game was available here so I could get a feel for how all these numbers interact.
I thought it was appropriate to close out this post with a card marked CL. Card-Gen makes a distinction between Relief Pitchers and Closers, and I imagine that alters how they are slotted into rosters and interact within the video game.
Putz gets some pretty good numbers. I would imagine closers get pretty high ratings in exchange for restrictions on how much they can be used in-game.
Well, that's it for the first batch of cards from my big Card-Gen purchase. There are at least two more posts on the way. It would sure be nice to build a full set of these things, but once you get past the commons and semi-stars there is a big run-up in price and scarcity. You'd almost need a source on the inside that could cut out the middleman and get the cards for you from the machine or the cards shop. I guess for now I will just be happy with whichever cards I can get.
The unusually sought after guys in the game are usually guys have a level 19 or 20 skill (the five categories on the back) but don't have a ton of stars or player value. This is because in the game your team is only allowed to have a certain amount of player value. Kinda like a salary cap. As time goes on and you win games the limit goes up but most people can't really have teams with nothing but 8-star players (I think they're banned at official Card Gen tournaments). So they look for ways around by picking up "bargains." Some good examples would be Aaron Crow (2012 edition) who has a 20 fastball and only one star (or maybe two, I can't remember). Or Brett Gardner (2012 ed) who has 19 defense and 19 speed while only costing your team three stars.
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