First Set Completion in Years

 Even during the height of my collecting days in this hobby I was never a set collector. Reason being that I was never willing devote the time, space and money necessary to build them. I usually just appreciate set collecting by seeing actual set collectors like Night Owl Cards build sets and merely following along on their journey via their blogposts.

But then came along a small compact set that I actually wanted to build.

Enter the Hololive x Pacific League collaboration card set from 2021.

Hololive Production is a Japanese VTuber (virtual YouTuber) agency. If you don't know what a VTuber is, it's a YouTuber/online streamer that uses a virtual CG model/avatar instead of showing their real face. Think of it more like they're playing a character in real time. It's niche form of online entertainment that got popular in Japan and has gotten even more popular around the world since 2020. Today you can find VTubers from basically every country and every language. Some of them are signed to companies like Hololive, but usually a lot of them are independent.

(Source)

It's at least gotten big enough that the Pacific League had a "Hololive Day" promotion at the Orix Buffaloes ballpark back in 10/3/2021 (Press Release). The company's CEO Yagoo even threw the first pitch. More importantly there was a bunch of stuff you could buy.

Japan is just as ruthless as America is at trying to make money off of merchandise when they have a popular intellectual property on their hands so the characters who were a part of this promo were plastered on a lot of things. Towels, keychains, pins, tapestry wall art, acrylic stand figures, folders, and possibly other items I didn't look hard enough to find.

The most important thing for me were the cards. As far as I can tell these were sold along with potato chips (Calbee style!) but I couldn't 100% confirm that.

There were two girls per Pacific League team and the set as a whole had only 12 cards because of it. Works for me!

You can see the back of the cards at the top of this post (they're all the same).

As for the fronts.

Shishiro Botan

Shirakami Fubuki

Uruha Rushia

Aki Rosenthal

Usada Pekora

Tokoyami Towa

Inugami Korone

Amane Kanata

Oozora Subaru

Houshou Marine

Natsuiro Matsuri

Shirogane Noel

The scans didn't pick up on it but these cards are pretty shiny and have a little refraction action (as Gavin would say) going on which is pretty sweet considering these aren't chrome cards. The downside to that is that whatever is being used to make them shiny is also warping them a bit. I had to put them all into a binder page in a hurry after these scans were taken.

These aren't all of the talents signed to Hololive (in fact the company would introduce more since the set was released) but pretty much all 12 here are really popular. If I had to guess they all probably have about 1 million subscribers on YouTube on their individual channels.

My personal "oshi" (read: favorite) from that lot and from Hololive in general is Shirogane Noel.

This isn't part of the 12 card set, I'm just showing this because I like this card too

For two large reasons.

But my degeneracy aside, this set being 12 cards and full of cute anime girls wearing NPB gear is pretty much why I decided to build it.

That plus I lucked into a 11 card lot and only needed one more to finish it. The last card I needed was Uruha Rushia, which didn't surprise me one bit considering she's the only former Hololive talent seen here and with that comes the notoriety tax (I paid more for her card than the rest combined).

But whatever, bam! The first set I'd completed since... I don't know, the Card Gen set?

Now one last note I'd like to end this post on is that some NPB savvy folks might be wondering, "Why is this just the Pacific League? Doesn't Japan also have the Central League?".

My understanding is that while the Pacific and Central Leagues make up the NPB, the two leagues operate differently and mostly independent of each other. The best example of this is how all six Pacific Leagues teams joined together to operate the Pacific League TV network where they all equally share the revenue they make off of that broadcast subscription service. Something the Central League teams can't do because they individually have big extremely tight and long commitments with their own local regional TV networks.

So usually the Pacific League is better and faster at getting something done as a collective unit. Though the Central League is unified to a certain extent since they'd also do collaborations with another VTuber agency Nijisanji in 2022. Plus I think this was also a timing thing since this promo was in October.

Still, really fun to build a fun small set again. While I wouldn't mind it if my set building endeavors ended here for a while, hopefully though there will be a lot more promos like this one in the future. Who knows, maybe we might even see Mori Calliope in Yankee pinstripes one day. We can only hope.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

Mission Accomplished

 Heading into 2023 one of my goals was to get an autograph for myself that was intended for me. Which basically means I wanted an autograph that was authentic but not certified.

Enter what might end up being the only TTM request I will send out for the year with this autograph by Julian Love who was a guest signer at a local-ish card show that I sent in this mail-in autograph order to. Whether that counts as a TTM is up to interpretation but I consider it no different to a TTM request with a donation attached.

I'll speak about Love the player in a TTM wrap-up post to be published another time as he's currently navigating free agency and that part of the story is still being written.

I'm not sure why but getting an autograph of an active player in a major sport usually tends to feel a little more special to me than getting any of the retired players that you usually see signing at shows and events. There's just a certain weight added to how the player is still in their prime and they're taking time away from doing everything they can to make the most out of the moment (and more importantly secure their future) to sign for you. Idk, feel free to disagree and think getting autographs of legends is just as special (I can't say I'd disagree with that either) but that's the way I look at it sometimes.

That same thinking is why I decided to actually go for this despite not being more than a casual Giants fan and Love may not even be a Giant come autumn.

Plus if nothing else the card looks great. Prizm when it's done poorly is a dark metallic mess but when it wants to brighten things up with a splash of color and some shiny it succeeds.

In any event this more or less accomplishes my goal of getting autograph intended for me. A sports one at that.

Just to fortify this goal a little more I also got a non-sports autograph via this 8x10 print signed by voice actress Kira Buckland.

Buckland has done a lot of work lending her voices on various shows, films and games imported from Japan. One of which is NieR:Automata, where Buckland voices one of the main characters (and probably the most famous character), 2B.

If you've been wondering what I'd been up to instead of sports, it was getting really into the video game about existentialism told through the POV of its main character with a big butt and cute face.

So there we go, three months in and I've already secured two personalized autographs for money as opposed to sending TTM's willy nilly in all directions like I did in years past. Oof, I really am getting old.

Big thanks to Love and Buckland for the autographs though.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).