Click Here to View Cart 14: Some BBM True Heart Autographs

I added a couple more autographs to some of my joshi puroresu trading card PC's recently, ordering from the webstore of a guy who seems to specialize in Japanese wrestling memorabilia. Unfortunately, he seems to be getting ready to downsize his store's inventory in the near future. There are still a couple items he has that I 'need,' so I will have to look into making that happen before I get cut off.

This first one goes into my Command Bolshoi collection. I am not 100% sure, but I think this alternate mask and uniform is what she wears when she wrestles in the Daijo (OSAKA Woman's Pro Wrestling) promotion as opposed to her usual home as the president of JWP Joshi Puroresu. Either way, this is a Bolshoi card I didn't have and I was excited to land it for my collection. It comes from the 2014 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling set and is serially-numbered # 53 / 90.

Another JWP wrestler I have a PC for is Rabbit Miu. I don't have as many of her cards, and sometimes her name is hard to search for online. On the JWP Facebook page it often gets translated into 'beautiful rodent.' In spite of those difficulties, I was able to get this card from the 2013 BBM True Heart set. It is numbered # 069 / 100.

Here in Ohio I have continued my quest to find neat hobby places to visit. Yesterday after class I stopped in at All-American Trading Cards, which I'd seen on the way to class one day. It was a disappointing mess. The three guys in the store were not interested in having a customer there, there was a motorcycle parked in the middle of a haphazard pile of hobby supplies and cards, and there were stacks and stacks of early- to mid-90's wax and sets everywhere, piled in no particular order all over the floor and tables. The stuff in the display cases looked like it had been sitting in the sun for about 25 years, and I guess a lot of it probably has been there that long. There were a few boxes of recent releases on the shelves behind the displays, but there were no prices anywhere and by the way the guys in the shop were acting it seemed like I was an invader in a private clubhouse more than a customer in a store, so I left.

Tonight while I was grabbing some dinner I saw a shop called The Game Haven. I went in and found that they had most of the same stuff you'd expect to find in a gaming store. I saw a few comic books I would like to get and some promising Lord of the Rings miniatures from Games Workshop in the clearance bin, but I was in a hurry to get home with my food and didn't purchase anything on this visit. I'll probably go back later, though.

Tomorrow I plan to visit a collectibles store called Maverick's. It isn't too far away, and I think they might have Allen & Ginter in stock.

Another Batch of BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling Cards

ヤッペーマン3号, Yappe-Man #3

I found a few more BBM True Heart cards in my scan folder, so I might as well get another post out of them. This first one is a 2014 BBM True Heart autograph of Yappe-Man #3, an alter-ego of wrestler Misaki Ohata, who wrestles under a lot of different names. The Yappe-Man #3 costume appears to be used mostly in comedy matches.

I didn't show the back of these autograph cards in my 2014 BBM True Heart overview post, so here's what they look like. The print runs for these are around 100 cards for each wrestler, with this card being copy # 40 / 90.

This Kana card is a Catch the Rainbow insert from the 2006 BBM True Heart set of 華名 - Kana, who was recently signed to the WWE's developmental NXT roster under the name 明日華 - Asuka. Back in 2006 she was pretty new to the game, and appeared in this prospect-themed insert. This set is serially-numbered, with this being copy # 093 / 200. This popped up on eBay and I snagged it both because of her jump to the NXT and because it was something I hadn't seen before.

フェアリー日本橋 - Fairy Nihonbashi, にゃんば～ - Nyanbar?, ダンプ松本 - Dump Matsumoto, 山下実優 - Yamashita Jitsuyu, 伊藤　薫 - Kaoru Ito

Closing things out on this post are a handful of autograph cards from the 2015 BBM True Heart set. Fairy Nihonbashi is another character who seems to be around mostly for comedic value. I've seen a couple of her matches and they seem to heavily feature her using some kind of fairy magic on her opponents. I am not entirely sure on the cat's name or purpose. Most of the Googling I've done on the name turns up information on the Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau mascot, which is a big-headed blue cat with a white face. Dump Matsumoto is a superstar wrestler from the 80's who made her debut the year before I was born. She's in semi-retirement now. I couldn't find much information at all on Yamashita Jitsuyu. Maybe I've got her name wrong, or maybe she just didn't stick with wrestling for very long. Kaoru Ito made her debut in 1989 and is still active today, with her last match coming just last week.

This was a pretty decent batch of cards, with the Dump Matsumoto autograph probably being the big acquisition of the group. The Kana insert is cool because of her WWE ties and the fact that I didn't have any examples from the insert sets yet. My favorite card of the bunch is probably the Yappe-Man #3 autograph. I just like the costume. It looks like she is a masked Mario Brother Sister, and the couple of matches I've watched with her in them have been entertaining.

Some More BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling Autographs

井上京子 - Kyoko Inoue, 林　結愛 - Yua Hayashi, ミウラアカネ - Akane Miura, 下野佐和子 - Sawako Shimono

I've picked up a nice pile of BBM True Heart wrestling autographs over the last several months, and eventually I had so many scans that I just tossed them all into this post. Some of these come from box breaks, and some are eBay purchases. There are a decent number of these that pop up from a couple of sellers on eBay, and I pick up any below a certain price that I don't already have. I have accepted that I won't ever have a complete set of the autographs from a given series, but I try to pick up any wrestlers that aren't already represented in my collection. If I remember right, these first two scans are from a box of 2015 product that I opened.

星　ハム子 - Hamuko Hoshi / 宮城もち - Mochi Miyagi, のの子 - Nonoko

To be honest I've kind of put my Japanese wrestling cards on the back burner recently. My source for boxes dried up and I've picked many of the lower-priced single autographs from eBay. I did recently get a base set from a past year that I was missing and grabbed some other odds and ends along the way. But in the very recent past I have been focused on things like Star Wars, UFC cards, LEGO kits, sketch cards, M.U.S.C.L.E. figures, and even some baseball and NASCAR stuff, too.

ケンドー・リリコ - Ririko Kendo, 春山香代子 - Kayoko Haruyama, 大畠美咲 - Misaki Ohata, ダイナマイト・関西 - Dynamite Kansai, 弓李 - Kyuuri, 宮城もち - Mochi Miyagi

I kind of keep up with things on the various Facebook fan pages and follow a few of the individual wrestler pages, too, but I am not really an active participant. The good news is that my source in Japan just put up the 2016 product for pre-order, so I have that to look forward to at the end of January or sometime in February. It looks like the release will be structured about the same as the last few years have been, with 20 7-card packs in a box, a 126-card checklist, and autographs and Polaroid photos (like that Kyuuri in the scan above; the Polaroids are numbered out of # / 7 while most of the base autos have print runs in the 90-100 range) as hits. The number of autographs per box has been increasing as the years go by, but I can't imagine that it will go much higher than the six per box that I averaged in 2015. I plan to at least complete the base set, which means I'm looking at picking up a minimum of 2-3 boxes of 2016. We'll see where it goes from there.

寿　ゆり - Yuri Kotobuki, 帯広さやか - Sayaka Obihiro

I finally watched the new Star Wars movie this yesterday. Unfortunately we missed the first few minutes of the film as the parking lot was full and my poor wife had to park pretty far away and herd our three kids all the way to the theater. The theater only had one guy taking tickets, scanning writing down bar codes in a notebook, handing out 3D glasses, and answering questions, so the line to get in took forever. Then the two younger kids had to pee during key parts of the plot. When you are in a hurry and you have a 4 year-old in tow their default speed is measured in geologic time, and if you make any attempt to rush them they actually can freeze themselves and their immediate surroundings while time accelerates outside their sphere of influence. So I missed a bunch of the movie and I was super-irritated much of the time, which kept me from really getting absorbed in the movie. The kids seemed to have a good time, so that was good, but I am going to have to go again without them so I can see the whole movie in a less stressful environment. 

えーりん - Erin, 下田美馬 - Mima Shimoda

In spite of the less-than-ideal experience I still came away from the film excited about Star Wars. It was good to see some of the old characters in their familiar roles and it was nice to see that the new characters aren't too hokey. The dialogue and some of the action was still a bit predictable a la the prequel trilogy, but I don't think you're going to escape that in the Star Wars universe. We'll probably have to see the full trilogy of this installment before I make too many judgments.

KAORU - Kaoru Maeda, 北沢ふきん - Fukin Kitazawa, 田中盟子 - Meiko Tanaka, 木場千景 - Chikage Kiba

We also added a new member to our family. No, we didn't have another kid. One of the twins has been obsessed with spiders for a couple of months, saying things like, "I really like mom, but I love spiders infinity!" So we decided to get a tarantula to feed that interest. I like critters anyway, and I try to indulge any inclination my kids have toward science and learning. Of course the kid who sparked this endeavor has nearly no interest in the spider, while the other two kids are super-excited about it, running in and out of the room to observe and announce the tarantula's movements. They named the spider Orbit after arguing for some time about naming it after variations of their own names.

小松奈央 - Nao Komatsu, ライディーン鋼 - Raideen Hagane, GAMI

While all the previous cards in this post were from the 2015 set, this final scan features a couple of 2014 autos and a 2013 signature. I'm not too picky when it comes to these cards. I am a collector, so I want them all. I did some mixing and matching of checklists in English and Japanese, and for at least a couple of names I used Google Translate, so if there are errors I apologize. If any of the wrestlers capture your interest a little bit of copying and searching from the captions should get you started on your research. I am looking forward to collecting the 2016 set and hopefully I'll be watching more matches in the coming year, too. I've got a few older sets to post about, too, when I get around to it.

2014 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling

I'm back with another installment of BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling cards. This time I will highlight the 2014 set. This set is packed out randomly rather than being released in a boxed set. I've taken a scan of the box top here, which features some of the more popular wrestlers and a preview of a base card and a couple of the kiss mark cards that are inserted randomly in the print run.

The back of the box features a checklist and shows a few more base cards as well as this year's autograph design. One big change in the autographs from 2013 to 2014 was a switch to a paper coating rather than a glossier coating. Some of the 2013 autographs have spots and runs where the ink didn't hold on to the paper, and the 2014 cards are changed to alleviate that issue. I also folded down the sides of the box for this scan to show that several more wrestlers are depicted on the box. I believe the pictures are all cropped versions of the images used on their base cards.

The pack design is a condensed version of the box lid. The foil is a little different than most foil packs we get baseball cards in here. It's more plastic and stretchy, so it's harder to tear the packs open cleanly.

The base cards feature a single posed photo of the wrestler in their ring gear with either a red, yellow, or blue background. The card backs feature an action photo and biographical information.

In the upper left of the scans is Kyoko Inoue, who is famous for being the first woman to win a men's title in Japan. Apparently her distinctive face paint is trademarked.

In the upper right is Yumi Ohka, who it appears is wearing the Wave Single Champion belt, which she held at the time this set was released. She also wrestles in America for an independent promotion called Shimmer, based out of Chicago.

The wrestler with the assault rifle is KANNA. She is relatively new, and it is hard for me to find a lot of information about her because there is a very famous female Japanese wrestler named Kana out there, and most web searches for KANNA bring up a bunch of links to pages about Kana.

In the lower right is Command Bolshoi, a wrestler who debuted in November 1991 and has managed to keep her true identity hidden for 23 years. That's quite a run of secrecy. 

The cards are printed on pretty thin stock and are also quite glossy. That combination has made them curl quite a bit, so they are difficult to line up on the scanner and stacks of them rock back and forth on the table. Cards from 2013 and 2015 seem to be printed on stock of similar thickness, but they don't have the warping issue that the 2014 set has. Maybe the type of card stock or the coating on the cards is the main cause.

I am not 100% sure, but I think the wrestler in the upper left is an alternate identity of Command Bolshoi. I could be mistaken. I have seen some references to Dotonbori Scheuermann when Googling the name from the checklist, but there isn't a clear link to a wrestler profile or something concrete. I just like the little crustacean logo on her mask.

In the upper right is Ayako Hamada, who is another wrestler who has done work in America, wrestling for Total Nonstop Action and in the Shimmer promotion. I am covering some of the same wrestlers here as I did in the 2013 set rundown, as I guess I am already keying in on favorites.

In the lower left is another masked wrestler, this one wielding a wand of some kind. She is known as Fairy Nihonbashi. You can see on the back of her card that her height and weight are shown as ranges rather than set values, as fairies can change size.

In the lower right is Akane Fujita. I can't find a lot of information about her.

On the left side of the scan are two cards featuring the same person in different guises. On the top left she appears as Misaki Ohata, and on the bottom left she appears as Yapper Man #3.

On the upper right is a wrestler whose name Google translates to Mizu-haaya. She also appears to go by the name Ryo Mizunami. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to translating and interpreting the information I find.

In the lower right is Lin Byron, who also competes as the masked wrestler Ray, which was her original ring identity. Ray debuted in 2003, while she appeared as Lin Byron in 2010. That wraps up the individual base cards in the set, which make up cards #1-113 in the checklist.

Cards #114-117 feature teams of wrestlers, as shown in the top two cards in these scans. In the upper left is a tag team called Classic Gals, made up of wrestlers Shuu Shibutani and Cherry. Shuu Shibutani retired from wrestling this month.

On the upper right are Las Aventureras, a team made up of Ayako Hamada and Yuu Yamagata. They held the Wave Tag Team Championship immediately after the Classic Gals, and kept the title for 270 days from October 2013 to July 2014, the longest reign so far in the history of that belt. They held it again from October 2014 to March 2015.

Cards #118-121 are some kind of subset, but I am not entirely sure what it's all about. It appears to be some sort of special photo shoot with the wrestlers featured in ring gear on the front and (kind of) street clothes on the back.

I say that they are wearing street clothes, but I am not certain that most folks run around in schoolgirl outfits in their daily lives, unless they are actually schoolgirls. I don't really know.

Cards #122-123 are Hall of Fame cards, featuring wrestlers who retired during the 2013 season. Shown here in the lower right is GAMI, who called it a career after 23 years in the ring.

The final card is a checklist, which has a picture of famous wrestler Kana on the front. She is the one who keeps popping up on searches for KANNA who I talked about above. Kana is reportedly one of the best wrestlers in the business, and she's got a pretty distinctive look to her face paint. And that does it for the base set.

It looks like I've opened three boxes of 2014 cards, with each box producing 5 autographed cards. There are also autographed Polaroids out there and a couple of cards featuring wrestlers' lipstick prints, but I didn't pull any of those.

I don't think there is any significance to the one blue ink autograph I got, as all the cards are serially-numbered to around 90 each. I've heard that there are special autographs with different ink and extended inscriptions, but I haven't actually seen any of them.

The autographs use the same photos as the base cards. As I mentioned at the top of the post, the 2014 autographs have a much less glossy finish than the 2013 autographs, which had a tendency to smear and bubble because they didn't absorb the ink all that well.

I did pull one dual autograph featuring the tag team Plus Minus 2013, Mio Shirai and Misaki Ohata. Mio is a very popular wrestler and has recently announced that she will retire after the 2015 season. Misaki Ohata / Yapper Man #3 was discussed earlier in the post.

That's about it as far as 2014 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling cards. I still have a lot of gaps in my knowledge, but this is a fun set to collect and I have a good time looking things up to put these posts together.