Card show trip - picking through binned singles - Ichiros

These were more pick ups from the last show I went to over the summer - this should be the last roundup, where I have dragged things out.

At one seller table, I found myself thumbing through what I think were Japanese Menko cards, but wasn't familiar with them at all - so maybe I was a little unsure if I was going to find some probable [impulse] buys.

I think the seller said "hello again" as if he remembered me from somewhere and explained there were different kinds of Menko cards - depending on whether I was interest in sports / non-sports / etc.

It took me a moment to realize I bought a couple of cards [$10-$15 each] from the seller at another show back in 2024 - I ended up going through the binned singles with Japanese MLB players and figured I was going to pick up at least one more Japanese era Ichiro card [just like in 2024].

For years, maybe Ichiro's Japanese cards were out of sight, out of mind - but I saw one that piqued my interest at a seller table at a local card show.

I passed on that random card, but started seeing posts on the Dime Boxes blog about picking them up every so often - so maybe I was 'inspired' to be on the look out pre-MLB Ichiro releases.

Ichiro may have been that Japanese import, the past 25 years that became an all-around star to look up to or collect - with Shohei Ohtani being that 'here and now' guy from Japan, perhaps the interest in Ichiro has been muted.

In my dig, I tried to look for more unique Ichiros, where they might jumble together in the bin [with varying prices] - I picked out a couple of loose singles [$10 each] that looks like they had a lenticular surface, so even if I paid more than what they where worth, I thought I had a pair of unique looking cards to make keepers.

The third Ichiro I picked up ended up being a graded card for $15 - it might be a case where I did not look hard enough with spotty vision, but the card looks like it has an acetate finish, where that made it a little 'cooler' to make a keeper out of.

My favorite find of the show was off a booth promoting a Japan based commerce Web site that also had cards such as binned singles for sale - it's a graded 2000 Upper Deck Ovation Japan Ichiro #41 [$30].

In a collecting world where PSA 10s rule, I only got myself a PSA 7 copy - but the way I look at it, I could pick up a raw card, spend to get it graded just the same and have the card in a slab with the same numerical grade.

It ends up easier making a decision on a graded card rather than a raw one - as long as the price on the label is still fairly reasonable.

The card might just been another Japanese era, Ichiro card where he was pictured as a longtime veteran - but the cards were patterned after the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set, which was embossed to mimic a baseball, which was a pretty neat thing to this day.

The card was printed the year before Ichiro would debut in the big leagues - so I almost associate it as a pre-rookie card rather than an 8th year base card of an all-time legend.

FWIW, I picked up the Ichiros knowing that I might have been going to Japan to do some traveling [which eventually happened this past November] - maybe my finds were designed to take the pressure out of seeking out card shops or card related things, where it didn't have to be a do-or-die mission if I came up short.