127 cards have black facsimile autographs, 12 cards have gold facsimile autographs
Notable Rookies: Norihiro Akahoshi, Shunsuke Watanabe, Hiroyuki Nakajima, Teppei Tsuchiya, Seiichi Uchikawa, Shinnosuke Abe
Late Series: Hanshin Tigers (cards 556-597 replaced cards 130-149, 370-389, 515 and 548) and Orix Blue Wave (cards 598-639 replaced cards 210-229, 450-469, 519, and 552). Also all insert and memorabilia cards were replaced with new versions. Card #555, a checklist card for the insert and memorabilia cards, was reissued with the updated versions.
Notes:
This was the final "regular" BBM set. Starting in 2002 and in every year since then, BBM has put out two "regular" sets, 1st Version and 2nd Version. As a result, 2001 would be the final year BBM did a "Late Series". Once again, they selected two teams to "honor". First, the Tigers changed their away uniforms to ones without pinstripes for the first time since 1983:
 |
| #139 (left) and #565 (right) |
Orix changed their uniform design for the 2001 season, the first design change since they had become the Blue Wave in 1991:
 |
| #224 (left) and #612 (right) |
For the first (and only) time, BBM decided to reissue the insert and memorabilia cards for the Late Series. So there are two versions of each 2001 insert and memorabilia card.
The Best 9 insert cards were 3D cards similar to the old Kelloggs cards from the 70's. The original cards had a purple background while the Late Series cards had an orange background. As in 2000, there was a much rarer version of each card available to winners of a mail in contest. The mail in cards were not 3D. As before, I have none of these, but
Collecting Ichiro has both versions of
the original and
Late Series cards of Ichiro. There were only 18 Best 9 cards in each edition (36 total) instead of the normal 19 - Bobby Rose, who was the second baseman for the Central League Best 9, does not have a card. Rose had been unable to come to terms with the BayStars following the 2000 season and (I'm guessing) did not come to terms with BBM for cards in the 2001 set either.
 |
| #B2 (left) and #B20 (right) |
The Golden Glove cards were plastic cards that were semi-transparent. The backs of the original cards had a red background on the biography section and an orange one on the Late Series cards. As with the Best 9 cards, there was a mail in winner version that was not transparent.
Collecting Ichiro again has
both versions of
both cards.
 |
| #G1 (left) and #G19 (right) |
The Prime Time Players insert cards featured one player from each team, once again replacing the original 12 cards with 12 new ones for the Late Series. I have none of these cards and since Ichiro had gone to the States in 2001,
Collecting Ichiro doesn't have any either.
BBM included a checklist card with the 2001 set that listed the insert and memorabilia cards. With them replacing these cards for the Late Series, I suspect that they issued a new checklist card. (OK, let me say this the right way. I have a checklist card listing the Late Series insert and memorabilia cards. I suspect that this card replaced one that listed the original insert and memorabilia cards, but I've never seen the original card.) UPDATE - I have now confirmed that yes, the checklist card was updated for the Late Series.
 |
| #555 |
There's a little unusualness about the Leader subset. Bobby Rose led the Central League in hits in 2000, but he does not have a card in the subset (or the regular set as well). I know that there have been other players who have appeared in the leader subset without appearing in the regular set since they no longer played in Japan (for example, Ichiro has two cards in this edition's subset) so the absence of the Leader card for Rose is odd (but obviously due to the same reason he's not in the Best 9 subset). The other odd thing about the 2001 Leader subset is that as far as I can tell it is the only Leader subset to not have a card for the previous year's Nippon Series Champion. Every set up until 2001 had one and every set after 2001 had one. I have no idea why BBM chose not to honor the 2000 Giants.
 |
| #10 |
This set only had two subsets other than the Leader subset. There's a seven card subset called "2000 Memorial Records" highlighting some significant events during the 2000 season. The feats included were the nohitters thrown by Melvin Bunch and Narciso Elvira, Koji Akiyama and Norihiro Komada reaching 2000 hits, Kazuhiro Kiyohara reaching 400 home runs, Shingo Takatsu reaching 150 saves and Tomaki Kanemoto joining the 30-30-30 club. Not quite sure what the 30-30-30 club is - Kanemoto had 30 home runs and 30 steals in 2000 - maybe the other 30 is the fact the he was in his 30s?
 |
| #528 |
The other subset features the 14 players who have had their uniform number retired by the various NBP teams (as of 2001 obviously). The players are Fumio Fujimura (Tigers #10), Tsuguhiro Hattori (Dragons #10), Masaichi Kaneda (Giants #34), Tetsuharu Kawakami (Giants #16), Sachio Kinugasa (Carp #3), Toshio Kurosawa (Giants #4), Minoru Murayama (Tigers #11), Shigeo Nagashima (Giants #3), Michio Nishizawa (Dragons #15), Sadaharu Oh (Giants #1), Eiji Sawamura (Giants #14), Keishi Suzuki (Buffaloes #1), Koji Yamamoto (Carp #8) and Yoshio Yoshida (Tigers #23).
 |
| #530 |
Usually the minor league team for an NBP team has the same name and wears the same uniform as the big club. In 2000, the BayStars made an agreement with Shonan for naming rights to their minor league team. Starting in 2001 and continuing until the naming rights deal expired in 2010, BBM included cards of young BayStars players in Shonan Seerex uniforms.
 |
| #324 |
The 2001 set had two parallel issues. There is a black facsimile autograph version of 127 cards - 28 of which are split between the original series cards for the Tigers and Blue Wave and the Late Series versions.
 |
| #501 |
There was also a very limited gold facsimile autograph version of only 12 cards. As you might expect, the 12 cards are evenly split between the 12 NBP teams (as opposed to the black autograph cards which are not evenly split between all the teams). According to Gary Engel's Checklist and Price Guide, the Late Series cards do NOT include the gold autograph versions which I actually find difficult to believe. Engel also lists the featured Dragon in the parallel set to be Koichi Sekikawa. I believe this is incorrect as I have a gold signature version of Masahiro Yamamoto's card. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but the 12 players who have gold signature versions of their cards are also the 12 players featured in the Prime Time Players insert set.
 |
| #59 |
Other cards:
 |
| #164 |
 |
| #413 |
 |
| #208 |
 |
| Back of #472 (Koichi Hori) |
 |
| #282 |
 |
| #554 |
 |
| Wrapper |
 |
| Ad in Packs |
 |
| Box |
UPDATE: Scott Kaneko sent me scans of a couple of the Prime Time Player cards - Hideki Matsui (#PT13) and So Taguchi (#PT22):
Just to completely beat this topic into the ground - when I was in Japan in March I picked up the original version of the "Special Cards Checklist" (#555). Here's the front and back of the two versions of this card:
After only including the poster in the 2000 boxes, BBM returned to having both the poster and the information sheet in the 2001 boxes. The posters continued to be too large for my scanner so I'm including a picture instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment