New BBM Stuff

BBM announced three new sets on their website yesterday - team sets for the Lions and Giants and this year's 2nd Version set.

The Lions team set is a 99 card set sold in packs. There are 71 cards for the players, manager and coaches, a checklist card, a five card "Lion Slugger" subset, a four card "Lion Generation" subset, a nine card "Lion Crossing" subset, a three card "Lion Hurlers" subset and six cards for the 20th Anniversary "Cross Stream" cross-set subset. There's a nine card "Lion Dance" insert set and possible autograph cards (including 3-D ones). There's also some sort of parallel issue for the player, cross stream and "Lion Dance" cards. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that there will be several Yusei Kikuchi cards. The set will be released in mid-July.

The Giants team set will be the largest of any of this year's team sets - 141 cards. There are 84 cards for the players, coach and manager (with FIVE different parallel issues). The set also includes a card for the mascot (or mascots), a checklist card, a four card Opening Game Highlights subset, a nine card "continuous photo" subset, a nine card "Future Star" subset, a 27(!) card subset entitled "GIANTS PRIDE 2010" and the six card "Cross Stream" cross-set subset. There are parallel versions of the "GIANTS PRIDE 2010" and "Cross Stream" subsets. There's two insert sets - a 10 card one that I think are some sort of combination card (showing two players) and a "Giants Pride" set (not sure how many cards in this set) and a couple of possible autograph cards. The set will be on shelves in early July.

With these two sets, the sole remaining team set that has not been announced yet is for the Dragons (unless I've somehow missed it).

BBM hasn't released all the details for the 2nd Version set yet, but they listed most of them. There will be 216 "regular" player cards - 18 per team. 72 of these cards (six per team) will have various parallel versions - silver signature, gold signature, holo foil and red foil. There will be a 36 card 1st Version update subset - I don't think that this means that there will be 3 cards per team. There is a 12 card "Best Pitcher" and a 12 card "Strongest Combination" (both feature 1 card per team) and 12 team checklists. There's 36 cards for the "Cross Stream" cross-set subset (and this is three per team). (The "Strongest Combination" and "Cross Stream" subsets have parallel versions.) And finally, there is a subset for first pitch ceremonies - BBM has not announced the number of cards in the subset yet. I'm hoping for a Randy Johnson card. There's only one insert set - a 12 card "Hit Makers" set (yet again, one card per team). There are also possible memorabilia cards - if I'm translating things right, they are patch cards for prominent rookies (so I'd expect a Yusei Kikuchi one). The cards will be released in early August.