Tokyo Big 6 University League Spring 2010 Baseball Card Set

I am possibly sniping the NPB Card Guy on this one, but while I'm still basking in the glow of the Tokyo Big 6 spring semester season starting (possibly my last one -- sigh), I went and bought a bunch of stuff. Got the new official Big 6 t-shirt and towel they're selling, and the usual college ball magazines (Shube's special, and College Base Heroes), and naturally, now that it's out, I also got the Tokyo Big 6 Spring 2010 Card Set.

You can see samples of the normal cards on their official site page -- if you're curious, the six they have shown are Yusuke Nomura (M), Tatsushi Yumoto (K), Kisho Kagami (H), Yuki Saitoh (W), Keisuke Okazaki (R), and Yoshihiro Maeda (T).

For whatever reason, there are only 5 players per team plus a team card rather than 9 as there have been the past two Spring Season sets, yet this set ALSO costs 2500 yen. Not really sure what's up with that either.

Player lists (plus school year and position, and * denotes captain)

Meiji:
Kazuki Nishijima (4, P)
Yusuke Nomura (3, P)
Fumiya Araki (4, IF/OF)
Shogo Shashiki (4, IF)
Masashi Yamaguchi (4, IF)

Hosei:
Kisho Kagami (4, P)
Kazuki Mishima (2, P)
Takuya Hiromoto (4, C)
Yoh Sasaki (4, IF)
Hiroshi Taki (2, IF)

Rikkio
Masahito Nihira (4, P)
Hayato Saitoh (3, P)
Masatoshi Itoh (4, IF)
Keisuke Okazaki (3, IF)
*Soichiro Tanaka (4, OF)

Keio
Masahiro Nagasaki (4, C)
Hitoshi Fuchikami (4, IF)
*Tatsushi Yumoto (4, IF)
Naoki Yamaguchi (4, OF)
Hayata Itoh (3, OF)

Waseda
Tatsuya Ohishi (4, P)
*Yuki Saitoh (4, P)
Koji Udaka (4, IF)
Hiroki Matsunaga (4, IF)
Shohei Habu (3, OF)

Tokyo
*Yoshihiro Maeda (4, P)
Gosuke Hiraizumi (3, P)
Atsushi Tanaka (3, C)
Shuhei Iwasaki (3, IF)
Takashi Kihara (4, OF)

Special Insert "Big Heroes" Cards (there's 1 in each box):
Nomura (M)
Araki (M)
Yumoto (K)
Itoh (K)
Kagami (H)
Taki (H)
Ohishi (W)
Saitoh (W)
Okazaki (R)
Tanaka (R)
Maeda (T)
Iwasaki (T)


I got a Hayata Itoh insert card with my set. If anyone reading this also buys the set and happens to get a Kagami or Ohishi (or Taki), I will gladly trade you for that and throw in something else to make it worthwhile for you... I even went to a card store to see if they had some opened boxes but apparently they don't bother doing that much anymore, even with the prospect of getting a special Yuki Saitoh card.

I don't have a scanner to show you any more of the cards per se, but I can show you the box, which is lovely as always. They always have some beautiful Jingu shots on the inside:





(Also pictured is my Itoh insert card above the closed box, and the front of Tatsuya Ohishi's regular card and the back of Kazuki Nishijima's with the open box.)

Something I find vaguely amusing is that only 4 of the 6 teams have a card for their team captain (Hosei's captain is infielder Seiya Ohyagi and Meiji's captain is Yuki Yamauchi).