New sets

Some new sets have been announced in the last week or so:

-BBM has released information about this year's 2nd Version set. The set will contain over 300 cards (exact number is not on the web site) consisting of 36 (3 for each team) 1st Version updates, 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 12 each of subsets that are translating as "break players", "season pitching" and "team topics" (one of each subset per team), a currently unknown number of 1st Pitch Ceremony cards and 12 team checklists. There will be two insert sets - "Leading Players" (1 per team) and "Twin Gems" (1 card per team featuring two players). As usual, there are memorabilia cards - each team will have a Jersey card for a rookie available (hmm, wonder who they picked for the Fighters....no suspense here - it's on the website) as well as there being some sort of multi-player jersey cards as well. I think there's also some sort of parallel facsimile signature issue for the 216 "regular" cards, but I'm not positive. The set will be out in early August.

- Calbee has announced that Series 2 will be out on July 25. As usual, they have put their checklist on line. There are 84 "regular" player cards (7 per team) along with a couple subset/insert sets. One of these sets is a single card commemorating a charity game (I assume for the earthquake/tsunami victims) between the BayStars and the Tigers. There's also a 12 card set (OP) featuring a player from each team's Opening Day line up and a 24 card "Star Card" set (S) featuring two players from each team (I think it's a pitcher and a position player but I didn't verify that). Lastly, there are four checklist cards.

- The All Japan Baseball Foundation has announced their fifth set - "Biographies Of The 20th Century Coach" This is a 45 card set (plus autographed inserts) apparently featuring NPB managers from last century. Haven't attempted to translate the checklist on the website, but from the picture it looks like the set include Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Masaaki Mori and Hiroshi Gondoh. It'd be nice if the set included some managers from the early days of pro ball in Japan, but I'd bet that the set is mostly guys from the 70's through the 90's. It will be released in early July. (I want to point out here that it is not clear to me if this is a boxed or pack based set).