The Japan-Fractors & Ichiro is Flawless

I always considered the 2012 series of cards to be significant to Ichiro collectors like myself, As I stated before its my favorite set since its Ichiro's last year with the Mariners and last year with Topps.  I believed I have seen every 2012 card released but somehow I totally missed the rare Japan-fractors Bowman Sterling set. This was some sort of subset to the standard Bowman Sterling set that had Japanese stars in it including Yu Darvish and Ichiro.  I have only recently seen these hit the market in /25 die cut base cards. They were going for serious coin $150-200. I then saw the 2 variations of the Relic die cuts /5. I happened to make a deal on one and found 2 more that surfaced and immediately contacted the owners of these cards and made a deal to acquire them. These are one of my favorite new cards in the set, they are a bit taller then standard cards so they wont even fit in a one touch holder!  

      Another recent arrival came in the newer '14 National Treasures Flawless set. I was always a huge fan of the Flawless design when they first hit with Basketball. They were very subtly beautiful and had an embedded gem inside each one. They just had a great very high end look to it. When I found out Baseball was going to have this design and Ichiro was in the checklist I became super excited. I was able to make some deals and complete the 3x card flawless set Diamond /20, Emerald /5 and the Diamond 1/1.

Japan Fractors /5

Flawless Diamond /20

Flawless Emerald /5

Flawless Diamond 1/1

The Immortals Exhibit

          This is by far my favorite set obviously because its only Ichiro! I have dedicated the corner of the Ichiro Vault (man cave) which is all Ichiro anyways to the Immortals Plates. I have some base cards displayed throughout while my high end autos from the set are kept in the lockbox.  
 I have never been a big fan of printing plates to be completely honest. But of course like all things there are exceptions and that of course is printing plates of your main PC guy. I have only accumulated 2 Ichiro printing plates over the years as there were not many that caught my eye. The Leaf company decided to release there whole line of printing plates on ebay recently and I thought it would be great to grab a couple. A couple of plates soon turned into a whole mess of them. Ichiro does something to my brain where all senses of logic and moderation goes out the window.I quickly gathered almost every single Black printing plate (these are my favorite looking plates of the 4) in the whole set and a handful of others that I thought looked nice. I decided to print out the 3 page promo sell sheets as well to hang below the 3 display cases of plates. Overall I have 63 new plates for the Immortals collection.
       Photos below are of the plates and various singles of the set. I just received a nice lot of base /5 and /20 cards from comc but im so tired from the workday I haven't had the energy to organize and take photos of them. You get the jist of it all anyway eh? Hey who am I talking to? ok bye.
 

The Immortal Plates 

Close up w/ Leaf Sell Sheets

Base Cards /51

Base /5 & /20

Base Gold 1/1 w/ set /5, /20, /51 & Black Plate not pictured

Base Auto /5

Pendulum Auto /5

Mays Ichiro Dual Auto Book 1/1

Ichiro becomes a Fish & takes over Leaf Q

So the news finally broke after much speculation that the Marlins were interested in signing him. Pending a physical he should be a solid 4th outfielder and DH for Miami. I am happy he finally found a team to sign him but sad he didn't go to an AL team so I have a chance of seeing him return to Safeco to play some road games. I do look forward to seeing some sick Miami Patch cards for the upcoming year as they have a very colorful design. The high end cards which include Ichiro of the end of 2014/early 2015 already hit with the Leaf Q line, Last year it was the exclusive Ichiro only line of Ichiro Immortals. And this is a nice follow up from Leaf for more high end Ichiro cards.  The best Ichiro cards by far were the patch auto cards. The one specific one they were using for their promos was in my opinion the best patch auto card of them all. I believe it had the perfect cut of patch with good chuck of lettering and color. I was lucky enough to work out a deal with the person who pulled that exact card. It definitely earns a spot in my top 10 PC cards. I also accumulated a nice batch of PURE glass autos which are one the coolest and unique looking cards I've ever seen along with some nice patch and bat relic cards.

14 Leaf Q Patch Auto /10

Another Patch Auto /10

The 2 Patch Autos are a continuation!

PURE Glass auto Charcoal x2, Blue /25 & the Patch Auto

Patch cards & Bat relics