2003 BBM 1st Version

2003 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size:  432 cards
Cards Per Team:  32 (team card, manager + 30 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards: 33
Checklists: None
Subsets: 2002 Retirement Players (15)
Inserts: Best 9, Golden Gloves, Slugger, MVP (Light Packs only)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey or windbreaker cards for the 2002 League MVPs - Hideki Matsui and Alex Cabrera; Jersey or windbreaker cards for the 2002 ERA Leaders - Masumi Kuwata and Masahiko Kaneda; Four different Combo Jersey or windbreaker cards - one with Matsui & Cabrera, one with Matsui & Kuwata, one with Cabrera & Kaneda and one with Kuwata & Kaneda.  (When I say Jersey or Windbreaker - I don't know for sure which it is.  Engel is unclear.)
Parallels: 120 cards have black facsimile autographs, 60 cards have a kira version (Light packs only).  There's also an orange parallel of the Leader cards and an autographed (real autographs!) parallel of the Retirement Player cards.  UPDATE - there's also a "silver" version of the Leader subset with the Light Packs.

Notable Rookies: Shuichi Murata, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Shohei Tateyama, Tsuyoshi Wada

Ahh 2003.  The year it started getting really complicated...

2003 was the year that BBM decided to introduce a second type of pack to sell cards in - the Light Pack.  Up until 2003, BBM had always sold their "flagship" sets in 10 card packs for 200 yen.  The Light Packs were five card packs sold for 100 yen.  There were more differences in the two packs than the amount of cards.  The 10 card packs could have any of the cards 1-432 in them as well as the memorabilia cards, the Best 9, Golden Glove and Slugger inserts and the facsimile autographed parallels.  The Light Packs would only have cards 1-405 in them (no Retirement Players or Team Checklists), no memorabilia cards, only a 2 card MVP insert and only the Kira parallels.

The fact that the Light Packs only have cards 1-405 in them is supported by the back of the Light Pack box:

One other thing to take note of - this was the last "flagship" set until 2013 that BBM sold in packs of 10 cards.  Pack size would drop to 9 cards for the 2003 2nd Version and 8 for 2003 to 2011. In 2012 the number of cards in a pack dropped to 6.  For 2013, the number of cards in a pack returned to 10, however the price per pack jumped from 210 to 315 yen.

After being put in separate sets in 2002, the Best 9 and Golden Glove inserts were reunited again.  Each insert set had two parallel versions - a serially numbered to 300 version and a send away version.

#BN2

#GG15

The twelve cards in the Slugger insert set had a playing card theme.  I'm not sure how the suit was selected for each card but the playing card number is the player's uniform number.  They had a gold parallel that were each serially numbered to 100.

#SG11

After having two levels of facsimile autograph parallels in 2001 and 2002, BBM went back to only a single parallel version in this set.  There are 120 black autograph parallels, 10 per team.

#260

There were 60 cards with Kira parallels in the Light Packs, five per team.  I know I have some but I couldn't find them in time for this post.  I will update this post later when they turn up.

The set only included one subset in addition to the standard "Leaders" subset.  This subset honored 15 players who retired at the end of the 2002 season - Koji Akiyama, Yasuo Fujii, Kenji Furukubo, Mitsuchika Hirai, Takahiro Ikeyama, Hiroo Ishii, Minoru Kasai, Koki Morita, Hiroshi Nagadomi, Hiroki Nomura, Masaji Shimizu, Yasuaki Taihoh, Kazuhiro Takeda, Shoji Tohyama and Yasuyuki Yamaguchi.  Each card shows a picture from the players actual on field retirement ceremony.

#407

This is actually one of my favorite BBM sets.  There's something about the design I really like, even though typically I prefer full bleed photos, not these faux white borders.  In my opinion, this would be the last attractive BBM design until 2006.

#126

#358

#109

#177

Back of #74 (Shigeki Noguchi)

Other cards and ephemera:

#430

#385

Regular Pack Box

Regular Pack Wrapper

Light Pack Box

Light Pack Wrapper

The regular box contained a small poster/information sheet.  Unlike previous years, the front of the sheet was in black and white rather than color.  The back side of the sheet contained a checklist for the set.  There was no information sheet in the Light Pack box.

UPDATE: Still haven't found any of my Kira parallels, but I discovered that I had one of the orange parallels for the leader cards (#392).  Apparently they were numbered to 500:

UPDATE #2 - Found the Kira's:

#200

Not sure the scan really does it justice.  It's basically a "shiny" version of the card with some sort of dotted pattern in the background.

I also discovered another parallel that Engel does not list - there was a silver version of the Leader subset that I'm pretty sure were only found in the Light Packs.  I don't know for sure but I assume that there's a silver version for each Leader card:

#378

These may be considered "kira" as well although they don't have the dotted pattern in the background like the player cards do.  Engel does not list the Leader cards with the kira cards in the checklist however.  I did notice that Jason was already aware of these parallels.