A huge shoutout to
Billy Kingsley over at
Cardboard History for inspiring me to start my Yuta Tabuse collection. A few weeks back, I helped Billy secure a box of
1st-half 2017 Japanese B.League Basketball cards...this stuff is selling like wildfire over in Japan and they sold out of preorders before the set even released back in mid January. A few days ago 2nd-Half released and same sort of thing. The secondary market is on fire....about 20% of the cards that are currently up for auction have bids on them. Since the 1st Half was released a month ago over 2000 auctions have closed with bids. Only ~800 card auctions are running and as I mentioned roughly 20% of those have bids. Unopened material is almost non-existent...chaos in the streets....BBM hit the right amount of hype. I don't follow basketball, but through helping Billy I decided I wanted to branch out and start collecting Yuta Tabuse. My first card....naturally Yuta Tabuse from the 2017 B.League 1st-Half set.
Why Yuta? He was the first Japanese player ever to appear in an NBA game for the Phoenix Suns in 2004...something that I was not even aware of until a few weeks ago. Although his NBA career was short, he has had the longevity in the Japanese basketball system and is currently playing for the Tochigi Brex. He is by far one of the oldest players in B.League, but is doing it for the love of the game and seems to be the go-to leader on any of the Japanese National Teams. More to follow as I slowly pick away at cards from his 2004-2005 season.
I see
Fuji has a nice Tabuse collection going, anyone else collect him?
Thanks for the inspiration Billy!
I'm glad I was able to get you to branch out. That's cool! when I started my blog I had less than 100 baseball, football and only 28 hockey, but now I have more than 1000 of each and am actively collecting the latter now. I just love the card hobby.
ReplyDeleteI only have 5 cards of him myself (counting my copy of the card shown here) but I know he has a huge following...Basketball is big in Asia and he's sort of the flagship player for the entire country, and probably 2nd behind Yao Ming in terms of popularity in that area. I had no idea that the set was so popular, but that's a good thing, in theory it means that they will keep doing card sets in the future. I've got some PayPal ready if you were able to secure a box of Series 2.
I hope they keep printing more in the future. I should be getting the box tomorrow or Thursday. It's making its way down from NY as we speak. I'll let you know when I get it. Thanks again!
DeleteI have your box and sent you an e-mail for PayPal. No hurry on payment.
DeleteThank you, thank you, thank you! My Brandon Laird stockpile has been depleted and I needed something to send you. I think I have a few extra Yuta's laying around.
ReplyDeleteWoohoo! Thanks Fuji!
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