Ichiro's face adorns cooking aprons, telephone banners and beach towels.
|  | | Ichiro's 1993 BBM card, his most commonly traded rookie card. |
There are Ichiro magazine covers, Ichiro figurines, Ichiro playing cards, Ichiro puzzles, Ichiro plastic fans and Ichiro drinking glasses. There are also Ichiro sunvisors that sit on the windshield and large cardboard supermarket displays, featuring life-sized versions of Ichiro.
When Gary Engel heard that Ichiro Suzuki -- the seven-time Japanese Pacific League batting champion with a .353 lifetime batting average -- was coming to America, he contacted collectors in Japan and bought every piece of Ichiro merchandise he could get his hands on. He bought all of the above and more for approximately $25,000.
"I stocked up on everything," said Engel, who has been a full-time Japanese baseball memorabilia dealer since the late '80s. "Having experienced (Hideo) Nomomania in 1995, I knew it would happen again. But never, in my 25-plus years of dealing with baseball collectibles in America, did I expect to see something like this."
"This" is Ichiromania, which has collectors in the United States paying top dollar to own anything associated with Major League Baseball's first Japanese position player.
While Ichiro's 23-game hitting streak in April and May converted many Americans into Ichiro lovers, Engel said the moment that set Ichiro-mania ablaze actually happened before the hitting streak. On April 11, Ichiro entered a game against the A's as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning. He took over in right in the bottom of the inning, which is when he scooped up a Sal Fasano base hit and threw a bullet to nail Terrence Long at third base. On April 12, Engel heard the phone ring more than ever before and everyone was asking for Ichiro.
"I got more callers asking for Ichiro items the day after that throw than any other time," said Engel, who has authored four versions of "The Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" since 1993.
|  | | The 1995 Calbee card, attached to a bag of chips, was limited because of the potato famine. |
In the six years since Nomomania, the progression of the Internet and the auction economy has helped American collectors obtain Japanese memorabilia with more ease. But the scarcity of card sets that include Ichiro, combined with the sudden demand, provide the intrigue and the hunt that many collectors love.
There's the Ichiro card in the 1993 Hawaii Baseball Winter League set, which Engel said had a production run of less than 1,000 sets. Demand has resulted in the recent discovery of counterfeit versions of the card, said Engel, who is also the Japanese card consultant for Pro Sports Authenticators (PSA), the industry's leading grading service.
There's the 1994 Calbee Hokkaido Ichiro cards, which were only distributed on the island of Hokkaido in very limited runs. Calbee, a Japanese snack food company, also produced an Ichiro card in 1995 that was attached to its bag of potato chips. However, the card is said to be extremely limited because the potato famine that year limited the production of the chips and therefore the cards.
One of the most valuable cards is his 1993 Takara rookie. A gem-mint graded card sold for $1,800 two weeks ago.
"I can't get the cards I used to get," said Rob Fitts, a New York-based Japanese card dealer and owner of robsjapanesecards.com. Fitts sold a complete 1993 Takara set for $50 last fall. Now he said he could sell it for at least $1,000. He also sold Ichiro's 1993 BBM rookie card for $35 each back then. Today, if he can find them, he sells them for $150.
Ichiro's impact on Fitts' business has been so great that he now divides his selling career into two categories -- B.I. and A.I: Before Ichiro and After Ichiro.
"Before Ichiro, I knew all my customers by name," said Fitts, who began collecting Japanese cards in the early '90s. "Now, with many of my customers, I just take their credit card numbers, but can't remember all their names."
Fitts said sales have tripled in the last month alone thanks to Ichiro.
"People love to collect him because he's totally different than anything that they've ever seen before," said Simeon Lipman, who claims to have to the largest collection of different Ichiro cards (over 200) in the world. "He's brand new and exciting and he's really the first player to tie the whole world together. Everybody's rooting for this guy."
Lipman's prized card is his 1995 Upper Deck card, which he calls "the holy grail of Ichiro cards." When the NBA played in Japan in 1995, an Upper Deck photographer took a picture of Ichiro at the game. Weeks later, they mailed him 200 cards, complete with his stats on the back. While the cards were just meant for Ichiro, Lipman said that "a couple somehow slipped out and got into circulation." Lipman heard about it in 1995, found someone who had one, and bought it for a mere $800. Because the card is so rare, Lipman said it's worth whatever someone would pay for it.
The highest price paid for an 2001 Ichiro card is believed to be $22,000. Bruce Gaston of SportsCardInvestor.com said that the company sold an Ichiro Fleer E-X card, graded a perfect 10 by Beckett Grading Services, at that price on June 12 back to Beckett. The sports collectibles publisher, which values the card at $12,000, will raffle off the card at the All-Star Fanfest from July 6-10 in Seattle.
Sign of the times
Ichiro autographs are another tough get for collectors.
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Enough is enough
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Ichiro's agent Tony Attanasio said Ichiro has turned down about $7 million in endorsements over the past eight weeks. "He doesn't believe he should go out and do everything for money," said Attanasio of Ichiro. "He has a fear of overexposure and he also has a blue-chip attitude, since he knows that his fans are loyal to the products that he endorses."
Attanasio said Ichiro's glove, which was stolen during the first week of the season, was selling somewhere for $20,000. A stolen uniform and bat sold for $40,000 and a bat he gave to Mariners pitcher Aaron Sele for a recent auction for a church charity sold for $6,500.
-- Darren Rovell
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"He's an impossible signer," Engel said. "I bet 99.9 percent of the stuff you see out there is fake." A Japanese version of Ichiro's autograph, Engel said, sells for about $1,000.
Ichiro has signed rarely since the season started, but he did sign a good deal during spring training. That's when Warren Dodge of Northern Virginia said his two sons got Ichiro's autograph. Dodge said one was recently sold for $110.
Upper Deck, the company that gave Ichiro his promotional cards six years ago, is now benefiting from the fruits of its kindness. The company signed Ichiro to a one-time deal during spring training to sign 1,000 cards, according to Kerri Stockholm, senior product manager for Upper Deck Baseball. The deal has enabled collectors to get an authentic autograph on the SPX Prospect autographed jersey card, which has been selling on the secondary market in the $500-$600 range.
Swatches of Ichiro's jersey also can be found on Upper Deck's Sweet Spot cards. Since game-used Ichiro items are also not floating around on the market, that's the best Ichiro-starved collectors can do. Although the piece of jersey on the card is advertised as game-used, Ichiro's agent, Tony Attanasio, said the jerseys are from spring training of two years ago. Lipman, now a specialist at Mastronet, the largest sports memorabilia auction house in the country, helped obtain one of Ichiro's game-used Orix Blue Wave jerseys in 1997, when he was working for Christie's auction house. Lipman, who doubts than many game-used items have been auctioned off since, said a collector from California bought the piece for $7,000.
Ichiromania is expected to get even bigger -- with Ichiro, as baseball's top vote getter starting in right field and with this year's All-Star Game being played in Seattle. Two weeks later, Ichiro Bobblehead Day (July 28) likely will draw a crowd hours before the game. Although the game has been sold out for a while, only the first 20,000 fans will get the dolls.
Ichiromania isn't confined to just collectibles. Fans can profit or lose, depending on how well they can guess his weekly performance. Betonichiro.com, an Internet betting site based in Grenada, was created at the start of the season. For $2 a week, fans are asked to predict the exact number of hits, strikeouts, home runs and steals the Mariners star will have. If the numbers from each of the days of the week match up, the winner gets 57 percent of the total pot. A perfect match last week would have yielded $286.72. A "couple hundred people" bet per week, about half from Japan and half from the U.S., said the site's manager Takaki Sugihara.
Engel said he has made about 1000 percent profit by selling Ichiro items. With the images of Ichiro that have crowded his house over the last year quickly disappearing, it's almost as if the California resident is losing a roommate.
"Thank you for coming to America, Ichiro," Engel said, when asked what he would say to Ichiro if he met him. "You changed my life, probably even more than you coming here changed yours. You were rich already, but now you paid my bills."
Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.
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