The Start of a P★League Bowler Collection

I got in an order of cards from Japan a couple of weeks ago, mostly in an effort to track down 2017 BBM True Heart Wrestling autographs I 'needed' for various wrestler collections. But since overseas shipping is a huge component of the cost of doing business with Japanese buying services, I added a few extra things to take advantage of the opportunity to consolidate. A couple of those extras came from various BBM P★League bowling card sets. I broke down box sets of the 2016 and 2014 bowling cards in previous posts, as well as the DVD set of the tournament that I think the 2016 card set is based on.

When I first opened up the 2016 card set, I didn't take a whole lot of notice of Sanae Mori, but when I watched the DVD I found her pretty entertaining whenever she was on camera. Just like that, a bowler collection was started. In my recent order, I picked up this autograph from the 2015 P★League set. She has a pretty distinctive signature, with a big 'M' arching over the whole thing with the 'ori' of 'Mori' in the middle. Below the 'ori' she spells out Sanae with the 'e' continuing on into a heart shape. Beneath that, she puts her professional bowling license number. I have a 2015 boxed set, but I haven't posted about it yet. As you can see by the snowflakes and the 'Very Merry Xmas' across the bottom of the card, the set has a holiday theme. Bowlers have two kinds of autographs, one in regular clothes and one dressed up in holiday costumes. I think both types also have special ink variations, but I can't remember. Anyway, this is Sanae Mori's regular clothes / regular ink version, and it's numbered # 38 / 90.

I also picked up an insert from the 2014 set. I think the main idea of this set is those word bubbles on the back of the card. In the center-top of the card back, there is a blurb about lucky objects and lucky colors. As near as I can tell, Sanae Mori's lucky object is a bear collectible or bear toy, maybe a stuffed animal or something similar? Aki Suzuki's word bubble seems to describe a lucky color, maybe red or orange. I'm not very good at this, and my phone app doesn't like translating from this photo on my screen.

I'll probably try to add a Sanae Mori card or two in my future orders through the Buyee service. They aren't extremely tough to find, but once you add buying fees and shipping to the base price they can get a little costly. Hopefully she remains with the P★League for a while longer, so she'll keep getting new releases in the (approximately) annual trading card set. I'm looking forward to the 2017 set already!