Roki sasaki pop 1 card

[jamesbro]

Card background: Konami Baseball collection season 2021 SR EX-SIGN CGC 9 only graded one across all grading companies. Hard to see but has an arcade glow on the card

 

[finestkind]

 

[jamesbro]

Thanks for your reply

 

[2014BESTSERVICE]

Any background info ? How'd they get produced and distributed?

 

[jamesbro]

Any background info ? How'd they get produced and distributed?

They were produced by Konami as the base set had over 900 players/cards. This version (ex-sign), was essentially a parallel. It's unknown how many were actually distributed through and arcade print on demand from a prize pool. There was a print lag in 2021 because of COVID-19 in Japan so they came out a bit late in early January of 2022 but for the 2021 season campaign still. There have been diluted sales history just on this 1 card, as it has passed different hands a few times. I have only seen this 1 card really. Quite rare as organic rarity goes meaning only one authenticated over all the grading companies. It was graded as a sports card because it's officially licensed by the NPB. Some of this info is on the back on the bottom right, written in Japanese in small lettering. I had done obsessive research on this card. Below I've attached some relevant photos to show the arcade machine itself at the time, as now it has been discontinued so they dont make this card for a while now. I believe the discontinuation was in 2022. Other pics show the Covid numbers in Japan at the time, meaning the arcades were closed which led to the print lag during the spike. This card was his season debut top parallel for season 2021. As a lot of cards were affected by print lag you can see this card comes from Appendix pack 17 which i believe was available within the arcade system between covid and the spread of omicron variant as show below. So only about a 1 week-1 month period as the arcades were closed mostly. This card is basically a survivor of a lost time. A piece of history for grail collectors.