The news for this year's 1st Version set went up on BBM's website today. This year's set is going to look a lot like the sets from the past two years. There's going to be 324 player and manager cards (27 per team), 36 cards for the "Leader" subset (2012 statistical leaders and award winners), 19 cards for the 2012 Best Nine winners, 18 cards for the 2012 Golden Glove winners and 12 checklist cards. There will also be (yet again) a cross-set subset that will be continued in other sets this year. BBM first did this with the "Cross-Stream" cards in 2010 - the cards featured a water theme and were included in the 1st and 2nd Version, the Touch The Game and the individual team sets. In 2011, the set was called "Cross-Blast", featured a dirt theme and was only included in the team sets. Last year, the set was "Cross-Fire", featured a fire theme and was only included in the 1st and 2nd Version and Genesis sets. Can you guess the theme for this year's set? Jason called this one last summer - it's called "Cross-Wind" and has a wind/cloud/air theme. I don't know yet which other sets the cards will be included with.
There will be three 12 card insert sets available (1 card for each team in each set I'm assuming). I think one of the sets is something like "Young Hope" which I guess would be a young player from each team. The other two are a rookie one and one called "Lightning". I'm not sure what "Lightning" highlights but it appears that they are limited to 50 cards each. There will also be memorabilia and autograph cards available along with parallel autograph versions of 9 player cards on each team and some sort of parallel issue of the Best Nine, Golden Glove and "Cross-Wind" subsets and the "Young Hope" and "Rookie" insert cards.
The big news for the set is that has increased the number of cards in a pack back to ten, which it hasn't been since 2003. They had lowered it to nine for the 2003 2nd Version set, then eight for the 2004 1st Version set, where it remained until last year when they dropped it to six. To allow them to return to ten cards in a pack, however, they raised the price of a pack of cards from 210 to 315 yen. The price of a box of cards stayed at 6300 yen, but the number of packs dropped from 30 to 20. However, with four more cards in a pack, a box of this year's set will contain 200 cards while a box of last year's will only have 180 cards.
As always, the set will be released in mid-April.
4 comments:
Dear NPB Card Guy,
I am interested in purchasing 4 boxes or sets of Japanese baseball cards. Is it possible that you can locate the following.
2 Boxes or sets of 2013 B.B.M. baseball cards 1st edition.
2 Boxes or sets of 2013 B.B.M. baseball cards 2nd edition.
If you cannot locate the above items, do you know anybody in the U.S. that maybe available to find them?
Cordially,
Greg Pietrocola
Try Prestige Collectibles and/or Rob Fitts.
Dear NPB Card Guy
I contacted Prestige Collectibles and Rob said "I don't have any 2013 cards at all. I don't know anybody that carries new cards either."
Maybe is there a Japanese seller who ships to the United States?
Thanks,
Greg
You can search AmiAmi and Rakuten Global Market and see if they have anything that you're looking for. I would kind of doubt they will though since what you're looking for is five years old and also in high demand.
The Mint stores in Japan will ship to the US so you might check them as well. Actually I know that they ship singles to the US but I don't know about boxes or sets. Or again whether they have what you're looking for.
Your best bet at finding anything is probably going to be looking at Yahoo! Japan Auctions (essentially the Japanese version of Ebay) and using a proxy bidding outfit like kuboTEN, JAUCE or Noppin to bid on something.
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