New BBM sets

BBM hadn't updated their website in over a month until last week, so I don't feel too bad about being a little slow and reporting on the two new sets that they've listed.

The first set is this year's edition of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles team set. Like most of the other team sets, it's a 99 card pack based set. There's 77 cards for the players, coaches and manager (with a couple signature parallels available), a checklist card, and a series of subsets called (according to the Google translation) "Three Opener" (3 cards), "Bat Breaker Returns" (9 cards), "Wings Of Hope" (3 cards) and "Absolute Aces" (6 cards). I think the "Three Opener" cards commemorate the Eagles first game in Sendai on April 29 after the earthquake - there's a sample card on the web page showing a card depicting the pregame ceremonies. There is also a nine card insert set called "Play Ball" (which also has parallel versions) and various autograph cards. There's also some memorabilia cards available for Akinori Iwamura and Kazuo Matsui, including one card with jersey or patch from both of them. The set will be out in mid-June.

Someone asked me about the new Fighters "Mega Energy" set about a month ago, but BBM only posted information about it last week. It's a box set containing 28 cards - 27 "regular" cards plus a "special" card. The 27 "regular" cards consist of 18 player cards, eight "New Comer" cards (which I would assume would contain Yuki Saitoh) and a mascot card. The "special" cards include possible autograph or memorabilia cards, highlighted by a bunch of "Yu-Yu" cards featuring both Yu Darvish and Saitoh (Yu-Chan). I think some of them may be die-cut as well. The set will be released in late June. (And this set should not be confused with the Fighters team set, which will be a pack based set that will be released later in the season - assuming BBM continues what they've been doing the past few years.)