New BBM sets

BBM announced two new sets on their website last week, both with a bit of a surprise.

The first set is their annual All Star set. This box set features all the players who make the All Star teams. In past years, this set has been released to coincide with the games themselves, so the photos on the cards are from regular, run of the mill games (unlike the Nippon Series set, where the photos are actually from the Series). The surprise this year is that the photos will actually be from this year's All Star games, so the set will not be released until late August. The set will contain 67 cards featuring 58 cards of the All Star players, six cards of the managers and coaches, one card for the player who got the most votes (the Carp's Kenta Maeda) and a card each for the MVPs of the two games. (Which means that the 2009 All Star game MVPs - Norichika Aoki and Nobuhiko Matsunaka - will not have a BBM card to commemorate their achievement. They do have cards in last year's Calbee Series 3 in honor of it, however.) Yakyu Baka has the full All Star rosters here.

The surprise of the second set, a 75th Anniversary set for the Hanshin Tigers, is that BBM felt it was necessary following the 70th Anniversary set they did for the Tigers back in 2005. (Because no offense to Tiger fans, but I think the only really significant thing that happened for the team in the last 5 years was the recovery of Colonel Sanders...) But anyway, it's a pack-based set that follows the standard BBM anniversary set drill of the past few years - 99 card base set with seven cards for team history, 65 cards of OB players, 20 cards for the 2010 Tigers and seven cards for team record holders. There are two insert sets - nine cards for "key active players" and nine cards for "former superstars" - don't know if they are "Tigers Best 9" sets or not. There's the possibility of three different jersey cards of active players (Kyuji Fujikawa, Shinjiro Hiyama and Tomoaki Kanemoto) and autograph cards of OB players. The set should be out in late August.