2000 BBM

2000 BBM Set Summary

Size:  632 cards
Cards Per Team:  42 (team card, manager + 40 players)
Team Card Theme:  Mascots
Number Of Leader Cards: 32
Checklists: 1 
Subsets: Young Hope (6), Comeback #3 (5)
Inserts: Best 9, Golden Glove, New Face, Rookie Reprint, 90's Best 9
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for the 1999 League MVPs - Kimiyasu Kudoh and Shigeki Noguchi
Parallels: None

Notable Rookies: Munenori Kawasaki, Kensuke Tanaka, Hisashi Iwakuma, Kenta Kurihara, Shugo Fujii, Hisanori Takahashi
Late Series:  Chiba Lotte Marines (cards 549-590 replaced cards 93-112, 333-352, 516 and 539), Hanshin Tigers (cards 591-632 replaced cards 253-272, 493-512, 524 and 547) plus corrections.

Notes:

For the the first time, the Late Series card were for two teams rather than one.  The Marines introduced a black alternate jersey - all the Late Series Marines cards featured them wearing it:

#345 (left) and #581 (right)

The Tigers home uniforms had featured white, pinstriped hats since 1979.  For the 2000 season, they replaced them with solid black hats - again, all the Late Series Tigers cards featured them wearing it:

#254 (left) and #592 (right)

For the first time (and as far as I know only time), BBM had to use the Late Series to correct some error cards from the original issue.  The "Leaders" subset cards were mistakenly labelled "'99 Readers" in the original issue, so the Late Series cards corrected them to "'99 Leaders":

#28 original (left) and Late Series (right)

It looks like there was another corrected card, but I don't know what the error in the original card was.  Seigo Fujishima's card was replaced in the Late Series for some reason.  I have no idea why - this is not mentioned in the write up of the set in Gary Engel's Checklist.  I won't swear that this is the only card like this but it's the only one I've seen.

#360 original (left) and Late Series (right)

Instead of a 12 card Hot Prospect/Future Star subset that the previous three sets had included, this set featured a six card "Young Hope" subset containing six 20 year old players - Katsuaki Furuki, Akihiro Higashide, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kazumasa Takahashi, Shiro Teramoto, and Ryo Yoshimoto.

#528

Giants manager Shigeo Nagashima had worn #3 during his playing days.  During his first stint as Giants manager in the late 1970's he wore #90.  When he resumed that job again in 1993, he started wearing uniform #33.  When the Giants wooed free agent Akira Etoh from the Carp following the 1999 season, they apparently worked out a deal where Nagashima would resume wearing #3 so that Etoh could continue wearing #33 as he had in Hiroshima.  For some reason (probably to have an excuse to do a five card subset for Nagashima), BBM felt this was worth commemorating.  The five card "Comeback #3" subset features two cards of Nagashima as a player wearing #3 and one card each of him as manager wearing #90, #33 and #3.

#533

As usual, BBM included an insert set for the previous year's Best 9 winners.  The regular version of the cards feature a "gilded" background.  There is another version of the cards that were available to the winners of a mail in contest.  These cards did not have the "gilded" background.  I don't have any of these, but Collecting Ichiro does.

#B7

For the first time, BBM added an insert set for the previous year's Golden Glove winners.  This would remain a standard insert set for BBM until 2011 when it (and the Best 9 insert set) became subsets in the 1st Version set.  Like the Best 9 subset, there were two versions available - the "regular" version with a gold glitter background and a mail-in contest version without the background.

#G16

BBM included an additional insert set featuring five players who changed teams following the 1999 season:  Akira Etoh, Nobuyuki Hoshino, Hiroo Ishii, Satoru Komiyama and Kimiyasu Kudoh.  Called "New Face", they were horizontally formatted cards that showed pictures of the player with both his old and new teams.

#NF5

2000 marked BBM's 10th Anniversary.  To commemorate this, BBM issued an insert set of reprints of rookie cards for one significant player for each of the 12 teams - Kenji Johjima, Kazuo Matsui, Ichiro, Tomohiro Kuroki, Yukio Tanaka, Norihiro Nakamura, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Hideki Matsui, Takashi Saitoh, Atsuya Furuta, Tomonori Maeda and Tsuyoshi Shinjyo.  Any reprints of cards from 1994 or earlier are the same smaller size that the original card was.

1993 Matsui Rookie (left) and 2000 Matsui Rookie Reprint #R8 (right)

Backs of 1993 Matsui Rookie (left) and 2000 Matsui Rookie Reprint #R8 (right)

BBM did one additional insert set - the 1990's Best 9.  These were plastic coated cards that featured the Best 9 team for the 1990's - Masaki Saitoh, Atsuya Furuta, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Bobby Rose, Akira Etoh, Kazuo Matsui, Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and Takanori Suzuki.  I have none of these to display.  I also do not have either of the available memorabilia cards - jersey cards for the two 1999 league MVPs - Shigeki Noguchi and Kimiyasu Kudoh.

Other cards and ephemera:

#395

#416

#454

Back of card #210 (Motonobu Tanishige)

#367

#536

Box

Pack Wrapper

Ad insert from packs

UPDATE:

Scott Kaneko sent me scans of two of the 90's Best 9 inserts - Hideki Matsui (#BN8) and Ichiro (#BN7):

BBM included a poster but not an information sheet with the boxes.  (It's possible that there was an informations sheet but I didn't keep it for some reason.  Not sure why I wouldn't have when I've saved them for everything else though.)  The poster is too big for my scanner but I took a picture of it: