2008 Japanese BBM Osaki Handball Team Cards

That's right, we are looking at official licensed handball team cards from 2008.  This particular set has 22 cards in it...21 base cards and 1 special autograph card.  For ~$8, I couldn't pass this up to take a look and see what wonders lie within for the 2008 Osaki OSOL Sky Magic!! set.  The box advertises 2000 total sets produced. 

There is a Japan Handball League (日本ハンドボールリーグ) with 10 teams.  I'd love to watch a game in person, but YouTube has quite a few games.  I don't quite understand the rules, but looks like Basketball, Soccer, and Lacrosse mixed together.

Opening the box shows the game schedule on the inside of the top flap as well as a team photo.  The set number is stamped in gold in the upper right corner....I got set #1834 in this instance.

Cards come wrapped in a paper sleeve and are printed on BBMs standard high-gloss paper.  Each card is numbered and shows an action shot with a smaller posed shot in the bottom corners.  The imagery is pretty cool.  The backs have personal data as well as another action shop and statistics.  Each players is presented in order of their uniform number so the goal keeper, with uniform #1, is first in the set.  There are 18 cards in the base set and 3 "Shining Moment" card of Daisuke Miyazaki which are basically interview cards to get to know him better.  Daisuke appears to be the star of the team since he got his own 3-card Shining Moment subset as well as appears on the box cover.  He also is touted as the star on the inside front cover and he is standing in the front row of his team photo.  Surprisingly, I also got an on-card autograph of his as my special insert!  It is numbered 52 of 75.  They only made this set of handball cards and only of this team.  I bought two sets and am planning on keeping the other one sealed.  Pretty cool stuff!