Card Gen Foil Matt Holliday

I've got another short post today. Most of the day was taken up by my nephew's birthday party at a local park. All four of my sisters were there, along with me, so we had five of the six siblings and their kids all together. We let the kids run around for a few hours, because it's not often that all the cousins get together.

I don't add a lot of SEGA Card-Gen cards to my collection these days, but every now and then I find one I don't have at a decent price. That was the case with this Matt Holliday card from the foil Rare subset of the 2012 SEGA Card-Gen set. In addition to having a different picture than his base card and a foil background, the Rare cards also gave a slight stat boost to the player in the associated arcade game. Card-Gen cards are some of my favorite bits of cardboard, and I am always happy to snag another one.

Contested Shots 20: Announcing the Winners of My Contest

I've been trying to get to this for most of the day, but it seemed like things kept coming up. I recently announced a contest on this blog for a couple of 2012 SEGA Card-Gen doubles that I'd picked up, an Ichiro and a Yu Darvish:

The Darvish comes with a card case. These card cases (with cards inside) were prizes for the Card-Gen arcade game, redeemable by presenting a card from the machine to the arcade attendant.

According the contest rules, an entry was gained by commenting on the contest post and stating which card you would prefer to win. After the entry period, I would randomize the entries 4 times on Random.org. The person at the top of the list would get the prize of their choice, and the person at the bottom of the list would get the remaining prize.

Here are the 11 entries I received before closing things down, as well as the selection each entrant made:

The Lost Collector - Ichiro

cynicalbuddha - Ichiro

Al Kawamoto - Ichiro

defgav - Ichiro

arpsmith - Ichiro

Sports Card Collectors - Ichiro

Mark Hoyle - Darvish

Angus - Ichiro

John Hazen - Darvish

R Laughton - Ichiro

Tim B. - Ichiro

And now it's time to announce the winners! Here are the results after four randomizations:

Mark Hoyle was the lucky person at the top of the list. He bucked the trend and picked the Yu Darvish card and case as his prize, which means last-place winner cynicalbuddha also won his selected prize, the Ichiro card. I will be in touch soon to get shipping information. Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all for taking the time to enter the contest!

SEGA Card-Gen Deck Box

Here is a pretty cool collectible I picked up from Japan by way of eBay. It's a card box for the SEGA Card-Gen arcade game, similar to the deck boxes you see for other trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon. I have never played the game itself (it was a Japan-only thing), but I have managed to accumulate a number of the cards that go with it. I'd never seen one of these deck boxes, though, so I placed a bid and wound up a winner.

Here's the front of the box in the packaging. It's your fairly standard card box with a Velcro closure. It's got Card-Gen branding all over it.

Here it is outside of the packaging. Not much else to say about it.

The back of the box has a celebration scene printed on it. It looks like someone just hit a walk-off home run and the team is waiting to celebrate a victory. Hopefully no one gets injured in the scrum.

I found a surprise inside when I opened it up. I'd made the purchase just expecting to get the case, but it had a card enclosed. Bonus cardboard is the best cardboard!

It's a pretty good card, too. This is a 2012 SEGA Card-Gen Yu Darvish EX card. Zippy Zappy commented on my post about an Ichiro card back in 2015, explaining that these cards (with cases) could be obtained when the Card Gen machine spit out a redemption ticket instead of a standard Card Gen card. You took the ticket to the counter, where the arcade worker would exchange it for a case with one of these special cards inside. I'd just never before made the connection between this case and that comment until I started writing this post. I've got a couple more of these cases on the way, one that looks like this one and one with different colors, so soon enough I'll find out if they hold any more treasures.

Tim 'The Angel (of Anaheim)' Lincecum

I picked up a few SEGA Card-Gen cards of pitcher Tim Lincecum from a seller in Japan, and they arrived in the mailbox just around the time Lincecum signed a contract with the Angels in an attempt to get his career back on track. Actually they didn't actually land in the mailbox, because I had to sign for the package and the mail carrier brought it straight to the door.

This 2010 card came out just after Tim had won his second Cy Young award and just before he won his 1st World Series ring with the Giants. In SEGA Card-Gen terms, that means he gets 8 stars on the front of his card and a nice full ratings block on the back. I don't have many 2010 SEGA Card-Gen cards in my collection, so I am always happy to add a new one. This seller is the same guy I get most of my Card-Gen cards from. He doesn't post auctions all that often, but when he does there are usually a few things I jump on right away. I combined this Lincecum lot with some Japanese wrestling cards he posted to bring down the per-card cost for shipping.

This 2012 card features an identical number of stars and the exact same stat ratings on the back. Although Lincecum's 2010 and 2011 seasons were a step down from his Cy Young years, he was still among the best pitchers in the game, and when this card came out he was close to winning his 2nd World Series ring, this time pitching mostly in relief during the playoffs.

This 2013 card is not Lincecum's base card. This is his Foil Rare card, a special set that features a foil background with a SEGA Card-Gen logo on it and a slight ratings bump on the back over the base card, as well as a different picture and different numbering. You can see Evan Longoria's cards side by side on this post if you want to see how the Foil Rares differ from the base cards. For a long time R.A. Dickey's card from this set was my most-wanted card, but blogger Zippy Zappy helped me track it down from this same seller's webstore. The wheels were starting to come off on Lincecum's control by this point, but he was still a celebrity and a star, so he kept his high ratings in this set. If there had been future sets I imagine reality would have set in soon enough.

I hope Lincecum can revive his career with the Angels, as baseball is more fun when the exciting players are playing well. Of course I still want the Astros to catch up to the Angels and the rest of the AL West, but hopefully they can do that concurrently with a Tim Lincecum revival.

2012 SEGA Card-Gen Zack Greinke Foil Rare

Yesterday I showed off a wrestling card I purchased from a seller in Japan. Today I'll show the baseball card that came alongside it.

This Zack Greinke card comes from the 2012 SEGA Card-Gen set. It's a Foil Rare card, which as I understand it was basically the insert set in SEGA Card-Gen. There is a separate set of Foil Rares that was given away as tournament prizes, but they look a little different. These regular Foil Rares have a different picture than the player's base card, a foil background, a different bio on the back, a one-point attribute increase, a different card number (denoting their place in the Rare checklist) and players of the actual arcade game noted that Foil Rare players generally did better in the video game.

I don't have any particular affinity for Greinke, but I don't necessarily seek out his cards. Back when he played for small-market teams I would draft him on my fantasy baseball teams, but once he hit the big time (and his numbers got even better) I stopped paying the price for him. Speaking of fantasy baseball, I had Greinke's new teammate, A.J. Pollock, on all of my rosters this year and he just broke his elbow. I think it's going to be a long season for me.

2012 SEGA Card-Gen Extra Ichiro

I picked up this awesome card on eBay a little while ago. It comes from the 2012 SEGA Card-Gen set. This card is actually from one of the inserts/subsets of the product. From what I can gather from Zippy Zappy's postings about the arcade game these cards came from, there was a period of time when the game machine would sometimes spit out a redemption card instead of a card from the base set. The redemption card could then be traded in at the counter for an Extra or Exchange card. This Ichiro comes from that special Extra set. It's got a great photograph and I can't imagine there are a whole lot of these floating around, especially in the US.

I obtained the Munenori Kawasaki card from this set from a webstore early in 2015. I saw this Ichiro card on that website at the time, but at $50 the price was a little steep for me. A couple of weeks ago the card popped up on eBay with a Buy It Now of $15. That's still a bit more than I like to spend on a baseball card these days, but in this case I thought it was well worth the asking price. I snapped it up as soon as I saw it in my eBay feed, as I figured there would be Ichiro/Yankee collectors all over it before long. It had only been listed for a little while when I completed the purchase; probably on the site for less than an hour.

I happen to know that the eBay seller I bought it from is the same guy who runs the webstore where I originally saw the card. Sure enough, when I went to check his site again the card was marked as Sold Out. Incidentally, he is the same person who sold me the complete 2013 SEGA Card-Gen base set, which I have sporadically been posting about since May of 2014. I've sent him a fair bit of my money, but the cardboard he sends me in return is well worth it. I just love these cards. It's too bad that this idea never took off in the United States and it's unfortunate that 2013 was the last year these sets were made in Japan. The supply of SEGA Card-Gen cards has almost completely dried up on eBay and I imagine it will dwindle away almost entirely very soon.

A Six-Pack of SEGA Card-Gen Rare Foils

I picked up a few nice SEGA Card-Gen cards recently from an eBay seller. They are from different years, but all hail from the Rare subset, which have a foil background on the front and better game stats on the back than they do on the base cards. The Joe Mauer card comes from the 2013 set and the Ryan Zimmerman card is from the 2012 issue.

These first couple feature Joe Mauer and Ryan Zimmerman. I don't necessarily collect either of these guys but I couldn't pass these up, especially when taking combined shipping into consideration. Joe Mauer is a pretty popular dude, and Ryan Zimmerman has had a pretty good career although it seems like he's been derailed a bit by injury.

I was pretty excited that this pair of guys were among the listings available for purchase. Mark Buehrle now plays for the Blue Jays, and seems to just keep trucking along. He was an All-Star last season and is 3-0 this year in spite of some rather pedestrian numbers. He won a ring with the White Sox in 2005, and he has been pitching in the majors since 2000.

Paul Konerko spent many years with the White Sox, and retired last season. He hit 439 home runs in his career and is scheduled to have his number retired by the White Sox next month. He also was on the Championship team of 2005. He was the face of the White Sox for many years.

Buehrle's card is from the 2011 SEGA Card-Gen set while Konerko's card comes from the 2013 set. I always like the descriptions on the back of the cards next to the player's total score. Buehrle is tagged as a '60 Feet Magician' due to his reliance on control and efficiency more than velocity, and Konerko is labeled as 'Dr. Batting Essential,' maybe because his bat was a bit more valuable than his glove.

These are the real gems of the lot for me. I was able to snag copies of Jose Bautista's 2011 and 2012 cards. He really came into his own in 2010 and 2011, blasting about 10 million home runs over those two seasons and ensuring that he would get a spot in this set.

His ratings increased over the two seasons, showing that the Card-Gen set changed from year to year based on player performance. Bautista is dealing with a bit of an injury right now, as he got into a rather heated exchange with the Orioles a couple of days ago and subsequently put a little too much emotion into a throw from the outfield, injuring himself in the process. But he did manage to knock a ball over the wall in response to being thrown behind, helping his team to win the game. The Orioles, Adam Jones in particular, had some words to say about Bautista watching the ball and flipping his bat after the home run, and the exchanges that went on got Bautista riled up enough to make the ill-advised throw that hurt him. I personally kind of like the celebrating and bat-flipping, especially if the batter has just gotten revenge for being thrown at, but the baseball establishment says that is a big no-no. I like Bautista and I like Adam Jones, so I'm not going to pick sides on this one. In the end Bautista and the Blue Jays won the game, and that's what really matters.

Click Here to View Cart 6: Randy Kawasaki

I received a small batch of cards from Japan recently, from the same seller who sent me my R.A. Dickey SEGA Card-Gen grail card. First up is the card that I just tacked on to the order because it was cool to me. It's a 2003 Kanebo Topps Series 1 card featuring Randy Johnson. It looks like the set was produced as part of some agreement with Topps, as there are Topps logos and MLB marks on the cards along with the Kanebo logo. Zippy Zappy over at Torren' Up Cards has a post from last year that goes into a bit more detail about the set. I nearly picked up a Jamie Moyer card from Series 2, but it would have put me over my threshold for the transaction.

The second card is a Munenori Kawasaki card from the Extra set of 2012 SEGA Card-Gen. I guess the EX cards were special exchange cards that you could get from playing the game, which may or may not have been encased originally? All I know is that it's hard to build a Kawasaki player collection because he apparently has a lot of fans and not a lot of cards, so you've got to grab what you can get. His stats aren't great, but the card does mention that he hustles on all plays. I like watching him in games, because he's usually doing something entertaining.

And here's another cool Kawasaki card. It's from the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes World Baseball Classic Edition. Again, I'm going to defer to Zippy Zappy to explain the origins of this set. I am unfortunately not an expert on any of these Japanese card sets, but I do know that I love just about every Japanese trading card I see. I just wish I could read the backs.

That's it for this purchase. I was happy to find some Munenori Kawasaki cards for my small PC of him and add to another unique Randy Johnson card to that PC. I recently picked up quite a few Japanese wrestling cards, too, and I will have to post about them once I get them sorted out.