Card Shops In Japan: G-Freak

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

When I wrote my post about Biblio recently I mentioned that it was the first of a couple shops that didn't fall into either the "Mall Store" or "Set Building Store" categories that the other stores I visited did.  The other store I visited that doesn't fall into either category is G-Freak.

G-Freak is located a couple blocks south of Okachimachi Station which is on the JR Yamanote Line in between Akihabara and Ueno Stations.  It's on the second floor of a jewelry store which doesn't really help narrow down its location as this area seems to be rife with jewelry stores.  It was raining and dark the evening that I went by this store so I didn't get a photo of the outside of the building. 

The good thing about this store is that it is packed to the gills with cards.  The bad thing about this store is that they aren't organized in any manner other than by team.  Basically each box you find here contains a bunch of random cards for a particular team.  These cards could be base cards, inserts, parallels or promos (although I don't think I saw any of the more rare, serially numbered parallels in the boxes I looked through) and aren't really pinned down to any particular time period (although most of their stuff is from the 1990's and later).  This isn't a store to stop by if you're in a hurry or if you're looking for something specific.  They have hits in display cases and other odds and ends but I didn't pay a lot of attention to them.

I had stopped by here with Ryan back in 2013 and I didn't really think much of the store.  I was in kind of a bad mood that day and was too impatient to take the time to really look at much, although I did pick up some good stuff.  As a result I put off coming by here until my last evening in Japan - visiting here was a "stretch goal" for the trip.  It turns out that this was really unfair to the store - I ended up having a great time going through some boxes and finding some interesting cards.  I went through boxes for the Dragons, Carp, Lions and Tigers and picked up a Lions team issued card of Tsutomu Itoh, a 1993 Kanebo card of Kenjiro Nomura, a 2003 BBM Sluggers card of Makoto Kozuro, a 2013 BBM Tigers card featuring Shintaro Fujinami and Kiyooki Nakanishi and a mid-70's "card" of Gail Hopkins that turned out to be a matchbook cover.  Total cost was 300 yen.

Beyond the cards, I also had a great time here talking with the owner and another guy in the store (not sure if he worked there or was another customer or just a friend of the owner).  I was here the evening after I had gone to the Fighters' farm team game in Kamagaya and they had the rebroadcast of the game going on the TV in the shop - they were very amused to discover that I had been at the game.  I was actually having a hard time explaining that I had been at the game until I pulled my ticket stub out.  The owner spoke English pretty well (as always it was MUCH better than the limited Japanese I know).  He was kind of excited when he discovered I was from the Baltimore area and made sure I saw what he called his "pride and joy":

He said he'd gotten Ripken to autograph it on one of the MLB All Star tours in the mid-90's.  I mentioned to him that when I had come by his store in 2013 he had a Ray Lewis jersey in the window.

Here's a couple other photos from the store - that's not the owner in the first photo:

Sorry for the blurriness of the second photo.

It's funny - after the 2013 trip I liked Biblio much better than this store.  After this trip I like this store much more.

I don't know for sure but I have a feeling that this store does not take credit cards.

Here's a map showing the store's location:

 

With this post I am finally done with posts about my trip.  It's taken me over 5 months to do it!

UPDATE - This is another store I revisited in 2024.  The store is pretty much unchanged - cluttered with boxes of random singles sorted by team.  I spent about an hour here one afternoon going through boxes of cards for the Giants, Tigers and Dragons.  I bought a handful of cards - mostly inserts - from Calbee and BBM sets between 1999 and 2013.  I had a great time talking with the owner again - I think he actually remembered me from my previous visit.  Here's some new photos - this time I got a photo of the outside of the store:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Shibuya & Card Fanatic

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

I've written recently about several stores that are a bit of a haul away from central Tokyo.  This post is about two stores in the heart of Tokyo - Shibuya specifically.  The two stores are Mint Shibuya and Card Fanatic.

I will admit up front that I didn't spend a lot of time in either store.  I went to Shibuya on a Saturday night and it was packed with people.  I had low expectations for both stores and the crowds just made me want to check out the two stores quickly and then get out of the area.  So treat this post as more of a "here's where these stores are" post rather than a "here's what to expect at this store" post.

Mint Shibuya is located just west of Shibuya Station on Bunkamura Dori.  It's on the second floor of a building with a store called Mevius on the street level*.  UPDATE - The store has moved as of September 2021 to the Shibuya PARCO Department store about a third of a mile to the north of the old location.  It not longer has a bar.  The map below has been updated for the new location.  It's basically an upscale "mall store" featuring mostly recent releases and hits.  It also has a large selection of gaming cards - especially Magic - The Gathering.  One unique feature of the store is that it contains a bar - so you can order a drink while you bust boxes or play trading card games.

*I didn't get a picture of the outside of the building because I was a bit confused as to where the shop was at first and the crowded sidewalk wasn't helping.  And there was some sort of repair/refurbishing being done to the outside of the building next door which kind of added to the confusion.

The store takes credit cards.  I feel I should mention that this was the 14th and final Mint store that I visited in on this trip.

Here's a map showing the store's location.  NOTE - this has been updated to show the store's new location as of September 2021:



Card Fanatic is located on Meiji Dori to the south and east of Shibuya Station about a half mile from Mint Shibuya.  It is an area that is mercifully much less crowded than the area immediately around the station.  The store is located on the third floor of another building that features a Mevius store on the first floor: UPDATE 7/1/21 - the store has apparently moved one building over.  It's now in the building to the right of the photo below.  The map at the end of this post updated to the new location when they moved.

Here's the store entrance:

It's the larger of the two stores although it doesn't have a bar.  My impression was that the store carried more cards from the US than it did from Japan.  The store also seemed to be the only one I saw that carried memorabilia other than cards - they had figurines and autographed photos, balls and jerseys.  I don't think any of the memorabilia was for NPB players though - mostly NBA and European soccer stuff along with some Shohei Ohtani MLB items.  They take credit cards.

Here's the obligatory map showing their location:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Yokohama

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

NOTE - There's an updated post about the store's new location.

Mint Yokohama is another store that has moved since I visited it in 2013.  It used to be located a couple blocks north of Yokohama Station on the second floor of a building above a Lawson's but now it's located on the eighth floor of Vivre shopping mall a few blocks to the southwest of the station.  UPDATE - It moved again as of May of 2021.  It is now on the seventh floor of the Marui City Yokohama shopping mall a little southeast of Yokohama Station.  Looks like the new location is a little closer to the train station than the Vivre location was.  The map at the bottom of this post has been updated for the new location.

The store I visited in 2013 reminded me a lot of Mint Kanda - a small, run-of-the-mill card shop, well organized and selling singles, sets and unopened product.  If I recall correctly they had older cards although they didn't have anything I was particularly looking for that day.  Unfortunately they apparently got rid of their old inventory when they moved to their new location and are now basically a "mall store".   (Ryan's comment to me was that they "used to be so much better before they moved into the mall".)  Like the other "mall stores" I visited they basically had mostly new stuff in boxes, packs, singles and hits.  As you would expect from a store in Yokohama they emphasized the Baystars and I was able to pick up a number of team issued cards here.  I also got a couple Giants "Players Day" cards from 2008.  Dan was able to pick up the Lee Seung-Yuop card from the recent Epoch Lotte 50th Anniversary set here.

The store takes credit cards.  It was written up in Sports Card Magazine #117 published in May of 2016 - I think the article mentioned their then-recent move to the mall.

Like Mint Chiba I wouldn't necessarily recommend going out of your way to come by here but this store is much more conveniently located than that one.  Yokohama Stadium is just two stops away from the Yokohama Station on the JR Negishi line so you make a quick run to the store if you were on your way to a Baystars game.  It's also not far from other touristy things in Yokohama.

Here's a map showing the store's location.  NOTE - this has been updated to show the store's new location:

Card Shops In Japan: Wrappers

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

8/5/23 UPDATE - It's unclear to me whether this store is still open or not.  They haven't updated their web page since January of 2021 and their Google reviews indicate that people aren't finding the store open.  Ryan has not found the store open in a while either.   However, their Google page lists that they are only open on Sunday, Thursday and Friday so that might explain everyone's issues.  There's no indication of how recently Google verified the store's hours though. 

2/22/24 UPDATE - Regrettably it appears that the store is actually closed now.  Their Google Maps listing now has them as "Permanently Closed".

Wrappers is the third baseball card store in Jinbocho and is my favorite of them.  I had originally visited this store in 2013 at their previous location in Akihabara.  Their new location is in on the sixth floor of the Musashiya Building on the south eastern corner of the intersection between Yasukuni-dori and Kijibashi street just to the west of the Jinbocho subway station.  It's also about a seven minute walk from Mint Kanda.  Here's a photo of the building:

I had plans to meet up with Dan here on a rainy morning and ended up getting here first.  Not knowing better, I went up the stairs on outside of the right side of the building.  When I got to the sixth floor I was greeted by a locked door that had no markings on it.  Puzzled, I went up another floor to see if I had miscounted but the store wasn't there either.  I went back down the stairs to wait for Dan.  When Dan arrived, he explained my mistake - there was an elevator that we needed to take up to the sixth floor.  The stairs I went up were essentially the emergency exit.

In my defense, it wasn't obvious there was an elevator. Here's the entrance that you use to get to the higher floors in the building (it's the one on the left):

If you go in through this opening and turn left, you immediately see the foot of the staircase.  To get to the elevator, you have to walk past the staircase into the building itself (can't remember if there's a door you have to open or not) and then turn left again and you'll see the elevator.  You essentially step out into the store when you step off the elevator.

Wrappers has the most diverse inventory of any store I've been to in Japan.  Beyond the usual BBM, Epoch and (at least recent) Calbee singles, you can also find singles here for more obscure issues from the turn of the century like Future Bee and DigiCube.  I also found singles for this year's Buffaloes team issued set, the BBM/Nippon-Ham Home Run sausage cards from the last few years and some Glico Tigers cards from 2003-ish that I'd never seen before.  Their BBM flagship singles go back to 1991 and they also have singles from most of the other BBM sets - I picked up some 1997 flagship, some 1999 Tigers team set cards and some 2004 1st Version "Asian Championship" cards here.  I also picked up the final Epoch NPB card I needed here.  Dan picked up some cards of Korean NPB players Dae-Ho Lee, Chang-Yong Lim and Seung-Yuop Lee here along with some Gravure Idol cards.

The store takes credit cards.  Ryan says that the price for commons here is usually 50 yen so it's a good store for doing set building.  They also have unopened boxes and packs and there's a couple tall display cases containing hits.  Here's a couple pictures of the interior of the store (and one features Dan again):

This is among my top five favorite stores in Tokyo, if not all of Japan.  Definitely worth a visit, especially if you're looking for something a little more obscure.

Here's a map showing the store's location:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Chiba

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

Chiba-prefecture is located just east of Tokyo and occupies the space between the east side of Tokyo Bay and the Pacific Ocean.  Many tourists coming to Japan visit the prefecture without perhaps realizing it - Narita Airport is located here.  Chiba-city is the capital of the prefecture and is best known to baseball fans as the home of the Chiba Lotte Marines.  But it is also home to another Mint store, called Mint Chiba of course.

Mint Chiba is located on the third floor of the BEE-ONE Mall just a short walk east of Chiba Station.   I think the Mall is just part of a larger building.  To get to the Mall you want to go into the main, obvious entrance (the one with the canopy over it) for the building on what Google refers to as "Chiba Station Odori Avenue".  I mention this so that you can avoid the mistake Dan and I made.  We went into the building through a doorway on the back side of it and took the elevator up to the third floor.  We were greeted by a featureless corridor with grey doors which actually reminded me of the Mint Hakata location.  We wandered around a little bit but didn't see anything that looked like a shop.  We eventually realized that we were pretty much in an office building rather than the Mall and we took the elevator back down to the ground floor and walked out the front door of the building.  Immediately to our right we saw the aforementioned entrance with the canopy and we both agreed that that was much more likely to be what we were looking for.  And sure enough we were greeted with the sight of the shop as we got off the escalator on the third floor:

That's Dan beckoning in the photo.

As for the store itself, it was...OK.  It's a mall store and I had set my expectations accordingly.  It carried a lot of recent stuff, including boxes, packs, hits and singles.  As you would expect for a store in Chiba they appeared to heavily emphasize the Marines.  I found a box of singles from Marines team issued sets and spent most of my time there going through it, picking out a handful of cards.  I also went through their singles from the recently released Epoch NPB set, looking for the 11 cards I needed for the set that Mint Urawa had not been able to include in the set they sold me.  I was able to find 10 of them here.  Dan went through the singles here looking for Korean NPB players (especially Lee Seung-Yuop who had spent two seasons with the Marines in 2004-05) but I'm not sure he bought anything here.

Here's a photo of the inside of the shop (which also includes Dan):

It's not a bad shop but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for it.  And it is out of your way - it's about a 40 minute train ride from Tokyo Station to get to Chiba Station.  It's also not all that convenient to the Marines - the ballpark is six miles away which works out to about a 40 minute trip via the Chiba Monorial and JR Keiyo lines (although about half of that's the walk to the ballpark from the Kaihimmakuhari Station).  But if you're in the Chiba Station area for some other reason it's worth stopping by.

Here's a map showing the location of the store:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Urawa

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

Saitama-city is a city just to the north of Tokyo-city, right over the border between the two namesake prefectures.  Urawa is a ward in Saitama-city that up until 2001 was itself a city and it's the location of most of the government offices for the city.  It doesn't have a lot of tourist attractions although it's the home to the Marine's farm team and there's a J-League team called the Urawa Red Diamonds although they play the bulk of their home games in a different ward of Saitama-city.  For baseball card collectors, however, there's another attraction - the Mint Urawa store.

The store is located at ground level about six blocks or so west of the JR Urawa station but you have to go down an alley to get to it - it's not on the street that you'll walk down from the station.  What you'll be looking for is a restaurant called (I think) Grand Blue:

You'll want to turn right here and go down the alley.  You can see there's a sign for the store on the side wall of the cafe.

You might notice the sign that says "Trading Card Museum" - it's not a real museum as far as I can tell - it's apparently some sort of contest thing Mint runs where people show off the hits they pull from busting boxes or packs.  I don't recall seeing the sign at any other Mint stores I was at but I don't think Mint Urawa is the only store participating.

I liked this store quite a bit.  For a shop that didn't have a lot of space they appeared to have a pretty good inventory.  It was a pretty good store for set building as they had singles for BBM flagship going back to the 1990's although I would say the bulk of the cards were from 2002 and later.  They also carried a lot of recent stuff and a lot of complete sets.  Their prices on complete sets seem to be among the better one around - Ryan had told me that I should probably wait to get the then-new BBM Lions set here as they would probably have the best price on it.  I ended up not listening and picked it up at Mint Hakata for 1500 yen.  I would have saved 500 yen if I had waited and bought it here.  They have recent hits in binders and some older hits were sorted by player in boxes.

The guys working in the store were incredibly helpful.  I was looking to get a complete 2019 Epoch NPB set and had been rebuffed at every store I had asked about it at.  This store wasn't selling the complete set but they were selling the individual 36 card team sets for 1000 yen apiece so they suggested I put the set together that way.  I told them I didn't really want to spend 12000 yen on the set - I was hoping to do it for more like 7000 yen.  To my surprise, they agreed to my price.  We ran into a problem though - they didn't have team sets assembled for the Giants, Lions and Fighters.  They then proceeded to go through a bunch of singles and assemble the team sets while I waited.  They ended up being about 11 cards short so they gave me a list of the cards I was missing and knocked another 1000 yen off the price.  I ended up with 421 out of the 432 cards in the set for 6000 yen (and I picked up the other 11 cards in the next couple days for another 1000 yen).

In addition to the Epoch NPB set I picked up a bunch of singles (including some short prints) from the 1996 and 1997 BBM set (I had reconstructed my want list on-line after having left the paper one at Biblio a few days earlier).  All in all I spent about 9000 yen here.

One thing to keep in mind when set building here - the singles are organized by team, not card number.

They take credit cards.

Here's a couple photos from inside the store:

The only drawback to this store is that it's way out of the way.  It's around a 40 minute train ride from Tokyo Station to Urawa Station and then about a 10 minute walk to the store.   As I said there's not much in the way of tourist attractions nearby (although there's a couple art museums that aren't far away).  The store's really not that convenient to the Marine's farm team's field if you're trying to combine baseball card shopping with baseball game viewing - it's about a 30 minute walk to the ballpark from the store and Google's suggested public transportation routes all take about that long as well via buses and trains.  But if you have some extra time and want to hit a good card shop (and have already been to the good ones in Tokyo), this store is worth your time.

Here's a map showing the location of the store:

UPDATE: I revisited this store during my 2024 trip and I was somewhat disappointed with it.  The interior of the shop has been reorganized and it seemed smaller than before.  It wasn't clear to me that they still had the inventory that they used to have.  I didn't see anything older than maybe ten years or so.  Deanna told me that I should have asked the folks working there as a bunch of the cards are in cabinets that you need help from the staff to access so it's entirely possible that the older cards are still there.  I was also expecting to some of the latest BBM team sets here at a decent price but the only one they had was the Tigers set and it was 2500 yen.  I ended up finding all four sets that had been released at that point (Lions, Baystars, Tigers and Hawks) for 1000 yen each at Coletre.

It wasn't a complete waste as I found a handful of interesting cards but it certainly wasn't as productive a visit as my 2019 one was.  I will confess to having been in a bad mood when I was there due to the ten minute walk in the rain from Urawa Station - maybe if it'd been a nicer day I'd have had a better time in the store.

I only took one picture and it was the front of the store.  The angle of the photo makes it look like the outside of the store is smaller but that's just an optical illusion:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Akihabara

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

Akihabara is an area in Tokyo a little to the north of Tokyo Station that specializes in anime, manga and video games.  There are many cosplay cafes in the area as well and the Idol group AKB48 has a theatre here.  While a google search for "trading card shops" will give you many hits, only one of those stores sells baseball cards - Mint Akihabara.  The rest appear to be gaming card stores.

I had visited Mint Akihabara back in 2013 but they were in a different location at the time.  They are now located on the sixth floor of the Akihabara Radio Hall building that's just to the southwest of Akihabara Station.  (Their new location is one building closer to the station than their old location.) Here's a photo of the outside of the building.

The store is actually located within a hobby store called Yellow Submarine which takes up the entire sixth floor of the building.  If I'm remembering correctly you don't pay for your stuff by the baseball cards themselves - you pay at one of the cash registers for Yellow Submarine itself.

The store is basically a mall store - most of what they have is recent cards.  There are display cases with the hits and I seem to remember there being a lot of Idol cards.  I did find an oddball tray of cards, however, and was able to pick up a bunch of Baystars team issued cards.  Dan picked up a 1993 Tomy Ichiro rookie card from the display case for 6000 yen when he was here a day or so after I was so they had some older stuff - at least expensive older stuff.

Here's a not very good shot of the store - the counter in the middle is where most of the single cards were.

As mall stores go, this isn't a bad shop, especially if you're in Akihabara for something else and want to get some recent baseball cards.  Like the rest of the Mint stores they take credit cards.

Here's a map showing the store's location - the location on the map is actually for Yellow Submarine itself and not just the Mint store:

UPDATE - This was another shop that I revisited on my 2024 trip.  It's still in the same location as before.

The big difference I noticed that is that while they had a lot of singles for recent sets, I couldn't find any of the oddball cards that I had found last time.  

My overall assessment of the store remains the same - it's not a bad place to go if you're looking for hits and recent boxes, packs or singles, especially if you're already in Akihabara for other things.

Card Shops In Japan: Biblio

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

I've been categorizing most of the stores I went to in Japan as either "Mall Stores" with limited inventory, most of it recent or "Set Building Stores" that have inventory going back at least 15 years if not longer.  There were a couple stores I visited that don't fit into either of those categories - Biblio is the first one of those that I'm going to talk about.

Biblio is located in Jinbocho, only about a tenth of a mile from Mint Kanda.  It is actually a used book store that specializes in sports books and memorabilia, especially baseball.  They carry baseball cards but it's unpredictable what they will have.  When I visited this store in 2013 they had a number of binders containing cards from the 1940's and 50's along with binders of Calbee cards from the 1970's and later and some boxes of other assorted cards.  This time I saw that they had a monster box containing 1970's Calbee cards and several boxes containing random BBM cards from the 1990's.  I discovered a box containing a near complete 1997 BBM set with the commons going for 60 yen apiece and I spent an hour or so going through it to nearly complete my set.  My notes for this visit say that I saw menko and bromides here but I don't remember it now.

I fell in love with this store back in 2013 but I kind of fell out of love with it this trip.  First of all - it's next to impossible to move around in this store.  Back in 2013 it was kind of charming that they had some much stuff it was stacked on the floors.  This time around it was annoying.  I think the difference was in 2013 it was just Ryan and me in the store while this time around there were other customers.  The second is that some of their stuff is overpriced.  I felt like I got a good deal on the one Calbee card I bought from them but they'd priced the short printed cards from 1997 BBM set at 1580 yen which is probably 2 to 4 times more than they should have been.  I had gotten carried away with getting the 1997 cards so I overpaid for the short prints - that's my fault for getting carried away though - I'm not blaming them for that.  The third thing is that I think they did a somewhat underhanded thing to me.  I had gone through the box of 1997 BBM singles and pulled all but one card that I needed from the box.  I had given the stack of cards to the folks running the store (a man and a woman - the woman spoke English pretty well and I think she was the woman I had spoken to there back in 2013) and they were going through the cards to determine how much I owed them while I looked through the monster box of Calbees  (which can be seen on the lower right of my photo above).  It looks like they pulled some of the cards I had selected out of the stack of cards I gave them because when I went through the cards that evening I discovered I was short more cards that I expected.  I think they pulled some of the stars that they had priced at 60 yen each - I distinctly remember pulling the Norihiro Komada card from the box but it wasn't with the cards when I got home.  I had bought several hundred cards so it was difficult to notice a handful missing while I was at the store.  I don't think they charged me for the missing cards though but it was a pretty crummy thing to do to pull back cards that they'd had priced for sale without saying anything to me.

Oh, and I left my want list behind at the store!  I can't blame them for that but I was pretty irritated at myself.  You can see it in the middle of the above photo - it's the white piece of paper with the folded corner.  There's actually several pieces of paper there.  I had the list on-line as well so it wasn't a complete disaster losing the list but I had to spend some time updating the on-line version before I hit any stores again.

They take credit cards.

I'm not going to write off ever going to this store again but next time I'll make sure I know what reasonable prices are for what I'm looking at and I'll make sure I walk out of the store with everything that I thought I was buying (and everything I came in with!)

Here's a map showing the store's location:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Kanda

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

UPDATE 8/23/20 - Mint Kanda has shut down and reopened as a completely different store called Mint Lab Tokyo in Nihonbashi.

Jinbocho is a district in the Chiyoda Ward of Tokyo that is known for its collection of used book stores.  It also is home to three baseball card stores - Mint Kanda, Biblio and Wrappers.  If you are short on time to go to stores in Tokyo it's not a bad idea to hit these three (or at least Mint Kanda and Wrappers) as they are within a few blocks of each other.

The store I'm going to deal with in this post, Mint Kanda, technically isn't really in Jinbocho - it's about two blocks "outside" of the district and a couple blocks away from Meiji University.  It's conveniently located at street level.

I feel like I always end up giving this store kind of short shrift.  It's actually a really good store but the two times I've visited in (both this time and in 2013) I had already felt like I had done the bulk of my set building at other shops and I didn't spent a whole lot of time in the store.  What I saw this time around was pretty much what I had seen in 2013 - they carry a lot of singles, especially for recent issues, and they are very well organized.  I felt they had a decent representation of BBM's issues and I did see older Calbee and Takara cards there are well although at this point I couldn't tell you how old.  This was the one store in Tokyo that I saw a lot of Giants team issued cards at although they may have been at other shops and I just didn't notice.

Here's a photo of the inside of the store:

I ended up buying a bunch of Giants team issued cards here as well as a handful of 2019 BBM Time Travel 1979 singles for someone on Twitter.  I spent a total of 2450 yen - 950 yen of that was the nine 2019 singles.  The one drawback to doing set building here is that their "common" single prices are 100 yen a card, twice as much as they are at Quad Sports and some of the other stores.  They do take credit cards.

Here's a map showing their location:

Card Shops In Japan: Match Up

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

My original plan in Nagoya was to visit all three card shops there on the fourth day of my trip.  However due to my back and hip issues (and my generally being out of shape) I was pretty much done for the day after Sean and I had visited Sports Card BITS and Mint Ponyland.  And while I spent the entire next day in Nagoya, all three card shops were closed that day (as they are all closed on Wednesdays).  So it wasn't until the following Monday when I stopped in Nagoya again on my way back to Tokyo from Fukuoka that I finally got around to getting to the third Nagoya store - Match Up.

Match Up is located in the Naka Ward of Nagoya, on Wakamiya-odori right across the street from Wakamiya-odori Park.  It's on the second floor of a building called Aoki Building West.   There's a parking garage (or at least the entrance to a parking garage) on the first floor and it's not entirely clear when looking at the front of the building that there are shops in the building - especially if like me you aren't looking up and noticing the big obvious sign for Match Up.  You have to walk into the garage to get to the staircase to go upstairs to the store - I think that's the door to the staircase visible on the right in this photo (just below "20:00"):

Here's the door to the store on the second floor.  The store is a little nicer inside than you'd think from how the door looks.

You can see the store is nicer than the door in these two photos:

I'm going to be honest here - I didn't really give this store a chance.  I had misinterpreted something Ryan had told me when talking about the Nagoya shops - "Match Up will be least useful for you, but that doesn’t mean it should be skipped, just a lower priority" - as basically saying that they wouldn't have anything I was interested in and as a result I didn't set aside much time for it.  (Although in my defense I was fitting it into my already pretty busy schedule.)  The owner was very friendly and I should have taken more opportunity to see what I could find there.  Instead I just asked about the 2004 BBM 1st Version Japan National Team inserts as opposed to some cards that might have been more likely for him to have carried.

What I did see at the store was a lot of assorted singles but I can't tell you how far back they go.  He had a lot of opened box sets and Idol cards.  I ended up not buying anything here - only the second store in the thirteen I had visited at this point in the trip that I didn't spend any money at.

The store was written up in Sports Card Magazine #119 in September of 2016.

I believe that there's a sign by the cash register in the last picture that indicates that they take credit cards.

Oh, and let's take a more detailed look at something else in that last picture:

That's a Staten Island Yankees cup!  Huh.  I wonder how that ended up here.  I asked the shop owner where he got the cup.  He said it was a gift from a customer.  Hmm, do I know any Staten Island Yankee fans who are known to frequent card shops in Nagoya...

Seriously though - I know that both Zippy Zappy and Ryan like this store so I feel bad I didn't take more time here.  Next time I'm in Nagoya I'll correct that oversight.

Here's a map of the store's location:



Nagoya's Mandarake store is located roughly a half mile to the southwest of Match Up so it's an easy walk if you want to hit both stores.

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Hakata

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

I'd been planning my 2019 trip to Japan ever since my first trip to Japan back in 2013.  I frequently picked Ryan's brain about which card shops to make sure I went to and Ryan always raved about the Mint Kashii store.  He said that they had "an amazing inventory for such a small, out-of-the-way store" (Kashii is in the north-east part of Fukuoka-City, about a 12 minute train ride from Hakata Station which is the Shinkansen Station in Fukuoka).  Imagine my dismay a few years ago when I stopped seeing anything about the store on Mint's web site.  Had I missed my opportunity to go to this great store? 

It turns out that they didn't go out of business, they just moved to a new location a few blocks east of Hakata Station and changed their name to Mint Hakata.  Their new location is much more convenient than the old one and is maybe a mile to the west of Mint Fukuoka.  And conveniently for me it was about three quarters of a mile away from my hotel.

I will say that it's a bit of a foreboding location.  The building the store is in is kind of a generic looking concrete building (that I unfortunately didn't get a picture of).  The store is on the third floor (I think) in a remarkably bland looking hallway:

That's the elevator on the left and the store is the door in the center of the photo.  Here's a closer shot of the door:

Here's a couple photos of the inside of the store:

The store appears to still have the amazing inventory that Ryan had raved about.  There were BBM singles available that I think went all the way back to 1991.  He also sold complete, hand-collated sets and had a large selection of opened box sets (these are the box sets with the hits removed that are usually sold for a huge discount from their unopened prices).  I don't know for sure what their price for common single cards is - Ryan thinks it's 50 yen per card.  Given their selection they're a very good store to do set building at - perhaps the only store west of Nagoya that that can be said about.

I didn't do a lot of set building here though.  I picked up one card I needed from each of the 1994, 1998 and 2000 BBM sets along with Takashi Toritani's 2004 BBM Rookie Edition card.  The four cards ran me 500 yen.  I'm not quite sure how that broke down but I suspect it was something like 200 yen each for the 1994 and Toritani cards and 50 yen for each of the 1998 and 2000 cards.  I also picked up the new BBM Lions set there for 1500 yen although I should have waited.  Ryan had cautioned me that I would probably find it cheaper when I got back to Tokyo and of course he was right.  Still I was pretty happy with the store - especially since it had been about five days since I'd made any progress towards completing the sets I was working on.

The store takes credit cards.  There was a writeup of it in the final Sports Card Magazine - #121 in January of 2017 (my post for the issue says the write up is for Mint Kashii but it really was Mint Hakata - the store hadn't updated its website URL yet.)

Here's a map showing the store's location:

UDPATE - this is yet another store that I revisited on my 2024 trip.  This time I made sure I got a picture of the outside of the building:

The big change inside is that the doors in the very bland hallway are grey now instead of green which makes them somewhat blander:

I did quite a bit of set building on this visit as I was able to find a lot of the cards that I had not been able to find at other stores.  I also picked up the new (at the time) BBM Marines team set for 1200 yen here.  I probably spent a good 45 minutes going through singles here.  I had been holding out hope that I'd be able to find singles from the 2023 Calbee Hawks set here - them not having them was really my only disappointment there.

Here's a new photo from the interior of the store - looks pretty much the same as it did in 2019:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Fukuoka

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

NOTE - there's an updated post about the store's new location.

Mint Fukuoka is yet another example of one of the Mint chain's "mall" stores.  It's located on the sixth floor of the Tenjin Vivre shopping mall smack in the middle of what I believe is downtown Fukuoka.  UPDATE - the store has moved as of April 2020 to a new location on the sixth floor of a building about a kilometer west of where it used to be.  The map at the bottom of this post has been updated to the new location.  It's similar in many respects to the Mint stores I previously visited in Shinjuku, Sendai, Umeda and Hiroshima - most of what they had was recent products from BBM, Calbee and Epoch.  They had boxes and packs for sale and some singles but only from the last few years.  They appeared to be more focused on "hits" as well as gaming cards (there are tables here for customers to use for gameplay).  I did see some complete teams sets for sale as well as a case containing rookie cards going back to the mid-1990's.  There were a lot of Hawks and former Hawks represented in those rookie cards - I remember seeing the BBM rookie cards for Kenji Johjima (1995), Tadahito Iguchi (1997) and Munenori Kawasaki (2000) in the case.  I considered buying the 2011 Calbee Tetsuto Yamada that was in the case but I ultimately decided against it.  The store also appeared to carry a lot of Idol cards although not as many as Mint Ponyland.

Here's a couple photos of the store - for some reason I didn't get a shot of the outside of the mall.

The store was featured in Sports Card Magazine #110.

My feeling towards this store was basically "meh".  It struck me as kind of a generic Mint mall store with nothing really to distinguish it other than a bit of a specialization on the Hawks.  I've wondered since I was there if I had looked harder if I would have found some Hawks team issued sets but I really didn't see anything there I hadn't seen at other stores.  This was the first store I visited on my trip that I didn't buy anything at.

Here's a map showing the shop's location - NOTE - this map has been updated to show the new location of the store:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Hiroshima

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

Mint Hiroshima is the latest addition to the Mint chain of trading card stores.  It opened in late March so it had been open for a little more than two months when I stopped by on June 1st.

The store is located on the fifth floor of the Don Quijote store on Chuo-dori about four blocks south of what I think is Aioi-dori - the main thoroughfare through Hiroshima.  It's also about four blocks south of the Hatchobori stop on the Hiroshima Electric Railway.

Like Mint Umeda, this store is another of Mint's "mall" stores.  There wasn't a lot here and most of it was recent singles, hits and unopened packs and boxes.  They did seem to have a lot of Carp singles which makes sense - I saw BBM Carp cards going back to about 2004.  I also saw some vintage Calbee and NST cards in a case on the wall.  I didn't think to look for team issued Carp cards - this would have been the obvious place to look for them.

 Also like Mint Umeda, the store sells a lot of gaming cards and has a number of tables set up for game play.  Here's a couple photos of the store:

I ended up only buying one card here - an Epoch One card featuring Xavier Batista of the Carp hitting the final home run of the Heisei Era.

Once again I didn't check for sure that they take credit cards but I'm pretty sure all the Mint stores do.

Here's a map showing the location of the Don Q store that the shop is in:

UDPATE - I had a quick re-visit here on my 2024 trip and the store seemed pretty much the same.  I looked a little harder for Carp team-issued cards but I didn't see any.  I considered picking up a couple of the Carp "mini-shikishi" cards but I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep them safe for the rest of the day I spent in Hiroshima.  Here's a couple new photos:

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Umeda

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

There are a lot of card shops in Japan but they aren't evenly distributed.  There are at least 20 in the Kanto region (including at least 12 in Tokyo) but I only know of about 12 that are outside of that area.  Osaka, the third most populous city in Japan after Tokyo and Yokohama, has only one shop that I know of - the Mint Umeda store.

Mint Umeda is located in the Hankyu Sanbangai Mall located just north of Umeda Station (and, yes, it's that Hankyu).  The store is in the north building of the mall on the B1 floor which is the first floor below ground level. 

This is another one of Mint's "mall stores" and as such it strongly resembles their Shinjuku and Sendai stores that I had previously visited although it's a little bigger than each of them.  Much of what the store stocks is recent cards - both as unopened boxes and packs and as singles.  The display cases on the walls of the store contain the more expensive cards - autograph and memorabilia cards as well as rare parallels.  This store also had a bunch of Calbee and Nippon-Ham cards from the 1970's in one of the display cases.  This is not a store that I would recommend doing set building at due to their relatively recent inventory and the fact that their singles are priced at 100 yen a card.

I wasn't really expecting to find much I was interested in here but I discovered a bunch of oddball cards on one of the shelves and spent awhile going through them.  I ended up picking up a bunch of team issued cards from Orix and Kintetsu, a couple of the Epoch-Kabaya Central League gum cards from 2016 and a 1998 Calbee CD card.  I ended up spending 4600 yen here.  In addition to the cards I picked up that oddball shelf also included some NST cards from the 1970's and some of Calbee's oversized cards from the early 1990's.

I'm pretty sure they take credit cards here.

The store sells a lot of gaming cards including "Magic - The Gathering".  It has a bunch of tables set up for people to play on.

Here's a map showing the location of the store.  Note that while the location marked is where the store is, it's not on the floor that's displayed on the map.  So don't expect to find a Tully's Coffee or a Taco Bell nearby.  The store is on the floor BELOW the one shown.



UPDATE - This is another store that I revisited in 2024.  It was pretty much unchanged although I didn't really see any of the older or oddball cards that I saw in 2019.  I mean, they may have been there but I didn't see them.  They had some really cheap recent complete sets - I ended up picking up the 2023 Epoch Hawks Premier Edition set here for 500 yen along with a couple singles from the Dream Order sets.  Here's some photos I took of the shop on this trip: