Shohei Ohtani is having another great year and I thought it might be a good idea to dust this post off and update it slightly for accuracy. Ohtani's Japanese rookie cards often get overlooked or ignored by many collectors because of the difficulty in understanding the Japanese baseball card market. BBM, much like Topps, is the dominate company distributing baseball cards in Japan and has been producing baseball cards since 1991. There are numerous other collectors out there that are much more knowledgeable than me on Japanese baseball cards, but I wanted to highlight Ohtani's first true rookie cards from the 2013 Japanese BBM 1st Version Set. This is the first regular BBM set that features Ohtani (not counting the Rookie Edition set) and features 11 different cards based on the iconic #183 pitching image! BBM calls their releases 1st Version and 2nd Version which is comparable to Topps Series 1 and Series 2. Check out my YouTube video at the very end!
2013 BBM 1st Version Box
* Red Wing #183 - Base
* Red Wing #183 - Silver Foil Signature
* Red Wing #183 - Gold Foil Signature #ed to 100
* Red Wing #183 - Holo Foil Signature #ed to 50
* Red Wing #183 - Red Foil Signature #ed to 25
* Red Wing #183 - Blue Foil Signature #ed to 1
* Green Wing #183 - Rookie Foil #ed to 100
2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Base
Ohtani's most popular and iconic rookie card.
2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Silver Foil Signature
Affordable silver facsimile signature parallel that is unnumbered. (Photo courtesy of YJA)
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2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Gold Foil Signature #ed/100
Spendy gold facsimile signature parallel numbered to 100. Difficult to find. (Photo courtesy of YJA)
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2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Holo Foil Signature #ed/50
Very difficult to find & expensive hologram foil parallel numbered to only 50. (Photo courtesy of YJA)
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2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Red Foil Signature #ed/25
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2013 BBM 1st Version Red Wing #183 - Blue Foil Signature #ed/1
No image available.
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2013 BBM 1st Version Green Wing #183 - Rookie Foil #ed/100
A few of these show up for auction on occasion. Very expensive and numbered to 100. (Photo courtesy of YJA)
2013 BBM 1st Version Green Wing #KP2
Handed out during a family event at Kamagaya Stadium (Photo courtesy of Ameba)
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2013 BBM 1st Version Pink Wing #SL07
Handed out at another stadium event (Photo courtesy of YJA)
2013 BBM 1st Version Purple Wing #183 - Sports Card Magazine (SCM) Base
Issue #98 of Sports Card Magazine had 5 original promotional cards including this one of Ohtani.
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2013 BBM 1st Version Purple Wing #183 - Sports Card Magazine (SCM) Silver Foil
Randomly inserted in SCM #98 were silver facsimile signature parallels. (Photo courtesy of YJA)
I missed the boat on Ohtani's BBM cards, but I appreciate you taking the time to break down each oc these "Wing" rookies. Plus two posts in three days? SMM is back!
ReplyDeleteThis was definitely fun to make! I know..a few posts here and there...certainly want to tie in more of the blog and my YouTube channel!
DeleteLike Fujii I'm glad to see you posting regularly again! And I admire you for trying to untangle the complex web of BBM parrallels, which I've never been able to do!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I’m trying to tie in the two blogs a bit more. It’s interesting how BBM does parallels….facsimile color variations are definitely unique.
DeleteI've never heard of the 2013 set being referred to as the "wing" set before - I like it. Red wings for Pacific League players and blue wings for Central League players.
ReplyDeleteI've regretted for years not grabbing that Kamagaya Stadium card for around $25 on YJA back in like 2015 or so. I'll never see it that cheap ever again.
Yeah, the dozens of cards I could have picked up years ago for super cheap…heck, his 1-of-1 could have been available at the time too.
DeleteGreat post. Thank you! Several sources claiming Ohtani’s 2014 BBM 1st Version Art of Auto is his most popular “rookie” card in Japan even though it’s from ‘14. Any truth to this from your perspective?
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