The 500 Pound Gorilla

Frequently when I work on posts for this blog, I feel like I'm shilling for BBM. It seems like all the sets I talk about are BBM ones, and most of the cards that I post are BBM ones. Well, there's a reason for that - BBM has no real competition in the production of baseball cards in Japan.

Now, you're probably saying to yourself - wait a minute, what about Calbee? OK, here are some stats about card sets produced in Japan for 2008. These aren't production numbers (total number of cards printed) but counts of "regular" (cards that aren't insert or memorabilia cards) per set.

First, here's BBM's count per set for 2008:

Set	Cards
1st Version	523
2nd Version	252
All Stars	65
Back To The 70's	144
Baystars 30th	99
Baystars Team Set	99
Buffaloes Team Set	99
Carp Memorial	45
Carp Team Set	99
College National Team	44
Dragons Team Set	99
Eagles Team Set	107
Fighters Team Set	99
Giants Team Set	117
Hakata Lions Memorial	39
Hawks 70th	99
Hawks Team Set	99
Lions 30th	99
Lions Classic	24
Lions Team Set	99
Lotte 40th	99
Marines Team Set	99
Nippon Series	60
Olympic Team	28
Rookie Edition	100
Rookie Premium	48
Swallows Team Set	99
Tigers Team Set	108
Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version	36
Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version	60
Tomohiro Kuroki Memorial	27
Touch The Game	132

So that's 32 sets for a total of 3246 cards. Now, again, that's just "regular" cards - that doesn't include insert or memorabilia cards.

In contrast, here's what Calbee did in 2008:

Set	Cards
Series One	166
Series Two	160
Series Three	161

So that's 487 cards in three sets. And that count contains all the subset cards in addition to the 288 "regular" player cards.

It's not even close. This is not meant to disparage Calbee, just to point out how dominant BBM is in the Japanese card market. This is a little like the baseball card market in the US in the 1970's - dominated by one company - Topps. Except that BBM makes a hell of a lot more cards in a year than Topps did. And Calbee is basically the equivalent of the Kelloggs 3-D sets.