1999 BBM Set

1999 BBM Set Summary

Size:  627 cards
Cards Per Team:  42 (team card, manager + 40 players)
Team Card Theme:  1999 Draft Class
Number Of Leader Cards: 36
Checklists: 1 
Subsets: Future Stars (12), CL Special Award (3), Ochiai Special (5), Best Players (24)
Inserts: Best 9, Dream Team
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for the 1998 League MVPs - Kazuhiro Sasaki and Kazui Matsui
Parallels: 130 cards have gold facsimile autographs

Notable Rookies: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara, Kosuke Fukudome, Hitoki Iwase, Kyuji Fujikawa, Hichori Morimoto, Tatsuhiko Kinjoh, Masahide Kobayashi
Late Series:  Yakult Swallows (cards 586-627 replaced cards 97-116, 337-356, 520 and 576)

Notes:

To celebrate the end of the century, BBM included a subset highlighting the best players of the 20th Century.  The subset had 24 card, four players from each decade from the 1940's to the 1990's.  The players from the '40's were Takehiko Bessho, Tetsuhara Kawakami, Atsushi Aramaki and Hiroshi Ohshita.  Masaichi Kaneda, Shigeo Nagashima, Kazuhisa Inao and Futoshi Nakanishi represent the 1950's.  Tsuneo Horiuchi, Sadaharu Oh, Hisashi Yamada and Katsuya Nomura cover the 1960's.  The 1970's are taken by Masaji Hiramatsu, Koji Yamamoto, Choji Murata, and Hromitsu Ochiai.  Yutaka Ohno, Atsuya Furuta, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Kazuhiro Kiyohara are the 1980's players and the 1990's are repesented by Kazuhiro Sasaki, Hideki Matsui, Fumiya Nishiguchi and Ichiro.  I'm not sure what measure BBM used to pick the players or why they were assigned to their particular decades.  A couple really make no sense - Furuta debuted in NBP in 1990, not in the 1980's and both Ochiai and Yamada only played one season in their respective assigned decades.  On the plus side, it's surprising that both Nomura and Kaneda appear in the set, given how rarely they make appearances in the OB sets.

#558

#566

Speaking of Ochiai, he retired following the 1998 season and BBM added a five card subset in his honor.  The "Ochiai Special" subset included a card for each of the four teams he played for in his 20 year career (Orions, Dragons, Giants and Fighters) plus a card showing him in a suit (the card is labelled "three times triple crown").  The cards all had a shiny silver finish on them.

#545

For the third year in a row, BBM included a 12 card "Future Star" subset featuring a top prospect from each team.  The 12 for 1999 were Daisuke Kanda, Hirokazu Ibata, Kohei Oda, Ryuji Miyade, Hideharu Hyodoh, Kentaro Sekimoto, Hiromasa Tamano, Keigo Imai, Masaoka Tanaka, Shigeru Kimura, Kenshi Kawaguchi and Hiroyuki Kobayashi.  (Have to say I'm surprised that Daisuke Matsuzaka wasn't included since he was as hyped in 1999 as Yuki Saitoh has been lately.)

#532

There was also an odd little subset featuring three Central League players who had apparently won some sort of "Central League Special Award" in 1998 - Tomochika Tsuboi of the Tigers, Kanei Kobayashi of the Carp and Yoshinobu Takahashi of the Giants.  I have no idea what the Special Awards were and I don't think BBM has ever had this subset again.

#543

There were only two insert sets with this set.  One of these was a 19 card set honoring the previous year's Best 9 winners.  This had been an insert set in 1997 but a subset to the regular set in 1998.  It will remain an insert set for the next 12 years.  The other insert set was a 10 card "Dream Team" which (like the 1998 version) featured a "dream" lineup.  This year's edition were diecut cards - there was a special "sweepstakes" version of these available to winners of a mail in contest - Collecting Ichiro has both the regular and sweepstakes version of the Ichiro card.

#B11

#D9

The 1999 set featured the first Late Series cards since 1996.  This year, the Swallows were celebrating their 50th season so they changed their uniforms and added an Anniversary patch to the sleeve.

Regular (#107) and Late Series (#596) versions of Kazuya Tabata's card

Some other cards:

#233

#386

#95

#413

#304 Gold Signature Parallel

#573

#13 Leader

Ad included in packs

Wrapper

Box

Back of card #448 (So Taguchi)

UPDATE: As was the case for the 1994 and 1997 boxes, the 1999 boxes included poster that's too big for my scanner and an information sheet (that includes a checklist):

I took a picture of the poster: