For the first five years of this blog, there was nothing more mind-blowing to me than communicating and trading with collectors from around the world, specifically overseas.
England, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, I couldn't believe the reach of the blog and how many different people collected baseball cards! I connected with many of them and traded multiple times with some.
Then, slowly, each of them disappeared from the blog space, often without a trace, until it's now just me and some of my Canadian friends.
One collector, though, has turned back the clock, at least for now, by moving from the States back to Japan. Kenny, a.k.a., Zippy Zappy, has been downsizing and refocusing his collection and sending out cards to folks who could use them more than he can.
I received an envelope from Japan a few weeks ago with some cards, and then yesterday a big, fat package from Japan Post was deposited on a chair on my porch. Well, well, that could be from only one person -- what's inside?
Well, this.
It was a binder full of cards. A binder full of Sega Card Gen MLB cards, which I am only familiar with because Kenny has blogged about them and sent me some of the Dodgers cards many times.
However, this time he sent an entire set.
This binder contains all of the 408 cards in the 2012 Sega Card-Gen set. ZZ very nicely in a note said that he sent it to me because I am a dedicated set collector and knew I would appreciate it.
This is too cool. For those who don't know about these cards, Sega produced card sets in conjunction with an MLB arcade game from 2010-13. They are licensed by MLB and Topps, I believe, but issued only in Japan (I don't know how they were issued, nor how Kenny collected the set).
This is my first foreign-produced complete set, as far as I know. (I haven't quite completed the 1983 O-Pee-Chee set yet). It contains many of the stars from that time -- Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, David Ortiz, Prince Fielder, David Ortiz, Joe Mauer, Derek Jeter, etc, etc. There's no Mike Trout, I guess he wasn't quite notable enough yet for Card-Gen.
I admit I'm a bit conflicted by this set because, as Kenny wrote in the note, I'm both a set collector and a Dodgers collector.
The Dodger cards in these pages make me want to remove them and put them in the team binders. Fortunately Kenny previously sent me most of the stars from that time -- like Kershaw, Kemp, Ethier and Billingsley. But guys like Tony Gwynn Jr. and Mark Ellis I have never seen before and ... oooh, that's tough.
The back of the binder contains some extras, I haven't had time to fully figure out what's there. I know the foil cards that are there are from a rarer subset.
This shiny foil Matt Kemp card showed up separately in the package.
ZZ acknowledged that I can't decipher these -- and I can't, nor can I play the game. But all of the Japanese writing on them just underlines how cool it is to have a set based in Japan!
A few other random cards showed up with the binder, like the Kemp and the Cliff Lee Konami card at the top of the post.
In keeping with the spirit of the send is this Ichiro 2000 Baseball Card Magazine sample card. What a bit of weirdness. It screams "Game Used Bat" but the "game-used" part is just a picture (or illustration) of a bat piece on this very thin card. (I could not find this listed on TCDB, I had to find it on ebay).
And some prospect autographs of some Dodgers who didn't make it from the time when ZZ did a lot of graphing.
All very appreciated and also Kenny's words about continuing to be a regular reader. As I've said often, during a time when so many have stopped, it's nice to know that others still continue to read.
This package was a wonderful reminder of the world-wide nature of the blogs and how much it brought collectors together from far-flung lands. We've really lost that in our other more current forms of social media -- at least the part about cherishing those collecting experiences and relationships.
Good luck in your collecting journey, ZZ. And everyone else.
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