Japanese Baseball Cards: 1995 BBM set

Sunday, January 29, 2012

1995 BBM set

Started this post a couple weeks ago, but between my work schedule and trying to catch up on all the new imports, it's been hard to find the time to get back to it. But I have a package waiting at the post office that I'm going to pick up tomorrow that I think contains five sets from last fall, so if I don't get this done now, it might be a while...

We're getting into the couple years that I don't have a whole lot of BBM cards from. I'll do the best I can extrapolating but I might not be completely accurate here. (Yeah, yeah, I know - what makes this different than any other post...)

1995 BBM Set Summary

Size: 651 cards
Cards Per Team: 42 (team card, manager + 40 players)
Team Card Theme: Mascots and Team Logos (for the teams without mascots?)
Number Of Leader Cards: 31
Checklists: 13
Subsets: Unbreakable Records (10 cards); Then And Now (10? cards), Ichiro Puzzle (9 cards), Hideki Matsui puzzle (9 cards), Hideki Irabu puzzle (9 cards), Combination Cards (7 cards featuring two or three players on each card);
Inserts: All Around Players
Parallels: 130 cards had gold signature versions
Notable Rookies: Kenji Johjima, Tomohiro Kuroki, Saburo Ohmura, Atsunori Inaba, Kazuo Fukumori, Ken Takahashi, Shigenobu Shima, Ryoji Aikawa, Norihiro Nakamura
Late Series: Chiba Lotte Marines (cards 604-645 replaced cards 216-235, 464-467, 469-477, 516, 565-571 and 600) plus five additional players (cards 649 and 650 replaced cards 144 and 161).

Notes:

This was the first BBM set with the cards being the standard (2 1/2 x 3 1/2) size.

Instead of a "Nostalgic Stars" subset like in the previous four editions, this year BBM featured OB (and one current) players in the "Untouchable Records" subset. The subset commemorates a number of NBP record holders - Sadaharu Oh (2 cards), Yutaka Fukumoto, Katsuya Nomura, Sachio Kinugasa, Isao Harimoto, Ichiro, Masaichi Kaneda (2 cards) and Hideo Fujimoto. (Ichiro's "unbreakable" record was for most hits in a season - it was broken last year by Matt Murton.)

#324

The "Then And Now" subset featured a number of players (not quite sure how many) who had recently changed teams (maybe prior to the 94 season?). I think some of the players included are Norihiro Komada, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Koji Akiyama and Makoto Suzuki.

#348

There were three nine card puzzle subsets - one each for Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and Hideki Irabu. The fronts of the cards featured a sequence of photos of the player while the backs made up the puzzle.

#413

#413 back

There were seven "combination" cards featuring multiple players - including for the first time two that had three players on them. The cards were again labeled with somewhat whimsical titles such as "Fan Favorites" or "Pacific Punch"

#588

For the first time, some of the team checklists featured a photo of the team's mascot rather than simply the team's logo. For a couple teams (the Marines and the Buffaloes), the team logo was still used - I'm guessing that neither team had a mascot at the time)

#598

#645

For the first time, BBM issued a parallel series with cards featuring gold facsimile signatures. Only 130 of the cards had the parallel issue.

#49

For the Late Series, BBM replaced the cards for the Chiba Lotte Marines to celebrate them getting new uniforms. (10 of the cards had gold signature parallel versions) In addition, there were five completely new player cards added - three for Americans who signed after the season started (Rich Monteleone, Terry Bross and Kevin Mitchell) and two for Japanese players who had been traded during the season (Masato Yoshii and Tatsuji Noshimura). There was also a checklist card added for the Late Series cards.