Shohei Index

Japanese-era cards (NPB)

Where Ohtani collecting began: the Japanese issues, their numbering conventions, and why US resale evidence must be labelled as such.

Japanese-issue prices and US resale prices are two different markets, and any number shown against a Japanese card has to say which one it came from.

These cards were printed for a different market, sold through different channels, and are still mostly traded there. That has one consequence this app takes seriously: a sale observed on a US marketplace is evidence about the US resale market for a Japanese card — which is a real market, and a smaller and thinner one than the domestic market the card was made for.

So the two are never blended. The catalog marks each identity's market region, the comp pools keep the regions apart, and every price this hub links to states the marketplace it was observed on. Where we have no compliant view of the Japanese domestic market at all — and today we do not — the honest output is a US-market read, labelled, or nothing.

The other practical difference is naming. Japanese issues carry set-specific number formats and are listed under transliterations, kanji, and an older romanisation of the surname. The catalog stores those as aliases against the identity rather than treating any one spelling as the card's name.

What the rows below rest on

8 identities in scope: 0 source-verified, 8 provisional, and 0 assembled from marketplace listings with no catalog source at all.

Corroborated only at search-snippet level; the source page itself has not been opened and re-read. Treat every detail here as a claim awaiting confirmation, not as an established fact.

None of them has a live listing or a confirmed sale on record yet, so there is no price on this page to read.

BBM 1st Version

  • 2013 BBM 1st Version #183Provisional — not verifiedSignificance: unrated

    0 live · 0 confirmed sales · No market record yet · Japanese-market issue

BBM 2nd Version

  • 2013 BBM 2nd Version #554Provisional — not verifiedSignificance: unrated

    0 live · 0 confirmed sales · No market record yet · Japanese-market issue

BBM Fighters

  • 2013 BBM Fighters #F02b BattingProvisional — not verifiedSignificance: unrated

    0 live · 0 confirmed sales · No market record yet · Japanese-market issue

BBM Rookie Edition

Calbee

  • 2013 Calbee #AS-22Provisional — not verifiedSignificance: unrated

    0 live · 0 confirmed sales · No market record yet · Japanese-market issue

  • 2013 Calbee #D-07Provisional — not verifiedSignificance: unrated

    0 live · 0 confirmed sales · No market record yet · Japanese-market issue

What this market punishes

  • • A price seen on a US marketplace is a US-market price. It is not a translation of the domestic market and must not be read as one.
  • • Number formats differ by set. A number that looks like a typo beside a US card is usually the set's own convention.
  • • The surname has more than one accepted romanisation, and early printings do not all use the current one. A search on one spelling is not a search of the market.
  • • Print run ≠ graded population. The serial on the card is fixed at manufacture; the graded population grows every time another copy is submitted. Never read one as the other.

Read next

Other hubs: The Ohtani rookie ecosystem, Ohtani autographs, by how they were signed, Milestone and Topps Now issues.