Buzz 12 in 12: Busting 2005 BBM Glorious Stars (Hour 10)

Do you like Buzz Breaks? Today's your day then as we launch 12 in 12 -- a series of a dozen breaks of wax boxes and wax packs in a dozen hours. We'll post one every hour all day long ... this is Hour 10.

The box: 2005 BBM Glorious Stars Japanese baseball cards
The cost: $20 (at The National)

What's inside this one? Why is it being ripped here? Keep reading ...

Packs per box: 20
Cards per pack: 5
Cards in this box: 99
Base set completion: 
83 of 144 (58 percent)
Duplicates: 10

Notables on base cards – Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroshi Ohshita, Shigeo Nagashima, Minoru Murayama, Tetsuya Yoneda, Isao Harimoto, Yutaka Fukumoto, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Alex Cabrera, Tomonori Maeda, Alex Ramirez, Akinori Iwamura, Atsuya Furuta, Yoshinobo Takahashi, Koji Uehara (2), Kei Igawa, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Masahade Kobayashi, Norihiro Nakamura

Inserts: 5 (all in gallery below with a sampling of base cards)
Active Stars (4) – Daisuke Matsuzaka, Benny Agbayani, Koji Uehara, Akinori Iwamura
Legend Stars (1) – Sachio Kinugasa

Autographs/Memorabilia: 1
Glorious Stars Captain Memorabilia (1) – Nobuhiko Matsunaka (/250 patch version)

What's Buzz-worthy: Buzz picked this box up at The National with zero intent for you seeing it here, but the results forced its way into the list. I'm not sure how rare the game-used patch cards are in the overall print run, but I've never pulled anything like it in many years of picking up a box here and there. (Mostly when I visit the big show because there's always one dealer there that specializes in nothing but Japanese cardboard.) I've typically heard that BBM basic sets are more like Topps flagship in terms of volume made and availability but with far rarer hits. The Active inserts here? All of those guys are former MLB players. The base set of this one is made up of half stars from the past and the second half stars of the present. I didn't land a Sadaharu Oh or Victor Starffin base card, but I did land a number of players who are priced slightly above common status per the one resource I have for researching this stuff, Gary Engel's Japanese Baseball Card Price Guide. (See it in the gallery below -- it's a rather comprehensive one that packs a ton of info inside, though my copy is old.) The inserts I pulled and the hit are among the best cards in the release price-wise. The memorabilia set is 12 cards and only three are valued higher there than the one I found. Nobuhiko Matsunaka was Japan's clean-up hitter in two Olympic games as well as the 2006 World Baseball Classic and beginning with his first full season in Japan (1999) he hit 23 or more homers seven straight seasons, peaking with 46 in 2005. For his career, which ended in 2015, he hit 352 homers with a .296 average and was twice the Pacific League MVP, an eight-time All-Star and a five-time Best Nine Award winner. Seems like a solid pull. ... I literally buy these boxes from time to time to see what might be inside if they're cheap -- since I can't read a thing on the boxes it's basically a rip for fun to see how stuff is different and interesting -- and this one delivered so well I wish I would have bought another of the two or three that I left behind. Dabbling in international cardboard -- just for the fun of it -- is something that you might consider if you can do it on the cheap. You never know, you might clean up ripping into a cheap box like this one.

Product Grade: A (historic and modern works for me)
Box Grade: A+ (a solid hit that wasn't expected)
Fun Grade: A-

What's next? Be back in an hour ...

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