More new BBM sets

A couple new sets have been listed on BBM's website in the last week or so:

- I don't believe that he's officially retired yet, but BBM is releasing a box set devoted to Kimiyasu Kudoh. Entitled "Never Give Up", the set contains 28 cards - 27 "regular" cards along with 1 possible memorabilia card.  It will be out in late August.

- Following the 1991 season, the Lotte Orions moved across Tokyo Bay from Kawasaki to Chiba and renamed themselves the Chiba Lotte Marines.  To celebrate their 20th season in Chiba, BBM is issuing a 20th Anniversary Marines set in early September.  This pack based set pretty much follows BBM's standard pattern for their Anniversary sets - it's a 99 card set containing 7 cards for "Marines History", 28 cards for the 2011 team, five cards for former managers, 45 cards for OB players (both retired and active ex-Marines), five cards for career leaders and nine cards for single season title holders.  There's a nine card insert set called "Pride Of M's" (with additional possible foil parallel versions) as well as the usual suspects for memorabilia cards - autographs and jersey cards.

- Well, another year, another Lions OB set.  This year's edition is entitled "Lions Classic 2008-11" and it commemorates the Lions Classic games (a number of games that the Lions play each year wearing retro uniforms) for the last four seasons (despite the fact that BBM has already issued sets commemorating these in 2008, 2009 and 2010).  This is a pack based set containing 99 "regular" cards.  It looks like there's a subset for each year's Classic.  Each subset contains cards of active players in retro uniforms as well as OB players from the era represented.  I'm not sure I'm reading the web page correctly, but it looks as if there's an 18 card (9 active player, 9 OB) subset for the 1951 era (2011 Classic), 24 cards (12 active, 12 OB) for the 1950's era (2008 Classic), 18 cards (9 active, 9 OB) for the Taiheiyo Club Lions from the 1970's (2010 Classic) and 27 cards (12 active, 15 OB) for the 1980's Lions (2009 Classic).  There's also a 12 card subset containing some sort of combination card showing an active and OB player.  There's a nine card inert set called "Classic Seed 9" featuring active players and various autograph and memorabilia cards.  The set will be released in late September.

In addition to the sets on BBM's website, AmiAmi also lists two new college sets from BBM - the Autumn Version of the Tokyo Big Six set and an 80th Anniversary set for the Tohto University Baseball League.