10 Years Of OB Team Sets

NPB celebrated the 70th Anniversary of professional baseball in Japan in 2004*.  Since the Giants were the first professional team in Japan, they also celebrated their 70th Anniversary that year.  To commemorate the Giants' anniversary, BBM released a set called (obviously) the Giants 70th Anniversary set.  (They also released a small box set for the 70th Anniversary of professional baseball but the less said about it, the better.)

* Just to be clear, Nippon Professional Baseball as an organization has not been around since 1935.  Professional baseball in Japan was called the Japan Baseball League from 1935 until 1949.  The reorganization into the two league system resulted in the creation of NPB.

The Giants 70th Anniversary set was the first set BBM ever released that was a team specific OB set.  BBM had done team specific sets before that included OB players (the 1999 Seibu Lions team set celebrating their 20th year in Tokorozawa is one example) but this was the first set that featured many more OB players than current players.  The pack based set pretty much established the pattern for many of the OB team sets that would come later.  There was a six card "History Of The Giants" subset, a large subset (75 cards in this case) featuring OB players for the Giants which included players who were still active at the time in both NPB and MLB, and a smaller subset (28 cards in this set) featuring the current year's team.  This particular set was 104 cards, the largest of any of the OB team sets.  Most would be 99 cards with some of the more recent sets dropping to 90 or even as low as 81 cards.

BBM followed up the Giants set with 70th Anniversary sets for the Tigers (in 2005) and Dragons (in 2006).  In 2008, they really got going - pumping out sets to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Hawks, the 40th Anniversary of the acquisition of the Orions by Lotte, the 30th Anniversary of the Lions being acquired by Seibu and the 30th Anniversary of the Whales (now Baystars) moving to Yokohama.  In addition to those pack based sets, BBM also issued box sets celebrating the Lions' 29 years in Fukuoka and the closing of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium.

2009 saw another six OB team sets.  The 60th Anniversary of the two league system brought 60th Anniversary sets for both the Lions and the Carp as well as a Kintetsu Memorial set (BBM had done a small box set in 2004 to commemorate Kintetsu leaving professional baseball but that was a more traditional BBM team set with only a relative few OB players).  Another set celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the Swallows by Yakult.  The 20th Anniversary of Orix buying the Braves from Hankyu was commemorated by a pair of box sets - one was dedicated to Hakyu players before the sale of the team and the other was for the Orix era.  Somewhat significantly, 2009 did NOT see a 75th Anniversary set for the Giants.

BBM dialed things back a bit for 2010 and 2011.  They only issued two OB team sets in 2010.  Five years after the Tigers had celebrated their 70th Anniversary, BBM was back with a 75th Anniversary set.  And for the first time, BBM issued an OB team set that was not tied to an Anniversary (or an event like the closing of a stadium) - the Lions Classic set that showcased the throw back uniforms that the Lions had worn in recent seasons.  The set contained both active players wearing the throw back uniforms and OB players wearing the original uniforms.  BBM did three more sets in 2011, only two of which were actual Anniversary sets - the Dragons 75th and the Marines 20th year in Chiba.  The other set was a tie-in to a promotion that the Orix Buffaloes were doing that commemorated the 1970's era Kintetsu Buffaloes and Hankyu Braves.

After no OB team sets in 2012 (for the first time since 2007), BBM brought them back with a vengeance in 2013.  Three were "traditional" Anniversary sets - the Hawks 75th, the Baystars 20th of having the name and the Fighters 10th of being in Hokkaido.  They also did a small box set featuring the three Nippon Series championships that the Hawks had won during their 25 years in Fukuoka.  Lastly, BBM started a new series of OB team sets called Legend.  The first one was for the Giants and commemorated the two stints Shigeo Nagashima had managing the team (1975-1980, 1993-2001).  The second highlighted the Tigers in the 1980's (when they won their sole Nippon Series championship).

So far 2014 has seen three OB team sets - the latest Legend set that commemorates the Senichi Hoshino era with the Dragons (1987 to 2001 although he didn't manage them that entire stretch) and Anniversary sets for the Eagles (10th) and Orix (25th).  I'm anticipating that there will be a Giants 80th Anniversary set before the end of the year but that remains to be seen.

If you've read this blog for a while then you know that I'm a big fan of the OB teams sets.  I actually own all of these sets and I've written a post on all of them except the Giants and Dragons 70th Anniversary sets.  I thought I'd present a table breaking all the sets down by team with links to the post for the set:

Team	Year	Set	Commemorates	Type Of Set
Chiba Lotte Marines	2008	Lotte 40th Anniversary	Lotte buying Orions in 1968	Pack
	2011	Chiba 20th Anniversary	Lotte moving to Chiba from Kawasaki in 1992	Pack
Chunichi Dragons	2006	Dragons 70th Anniversary	Dragons 70th Anniversary	Pack
	2011	Dragons 75th Anniversary	Dragons 75th Anniversary	Pack
	2014	Dragons Legend	Senichi Hoshino Mangerial Era (1987-2001)	Pack
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks	2008	Hawks 70th Anniversary	Hawks 70th Anniversary	Pack
	2013	Hawks 75th Anniversary	Hawks 75th Anniversary	Pack
	2013	Fukuoka Legacy	Nippon Series Championships in Fukuoka	Box
Hanshin Tigers	2005	Tigers 70th Anniversary	Tigers 70th Anniversary	Pack
	2010	Tigers 75th Anniversary	Tigers 75th Anniversary	Pack
	2013	Tigers Legend	1980's	Pack
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	2008	Hiroshima Memorial	Closing of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium	Box
	2009	Carp 60th Anniversary	Carp 60th Anniversary	Pack
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	2013	Fighters 10 Years in Hokkaido	10th Anniversary of Fighters moving to Sapporo	Pack
Orix Buffaloes (including Kintetsu)	2009	Hankyu Memorial	Players from before Orix bought Braves in 1988	Box
	2009	Orix 20th Anniversary	20th Anniversary of Orix buying Braves	Box
	2009	Kintetsu Memorial	60th Anniversary of founding of Kintetsu team in 1950	Pack
	2011	Legend Of The Bs	1970's era Hankyu and Kintetsu	Pack
	2014	Orix 25th Anniversary	25th Anniversary of Orix buying Braves	Pack
Saitama Seibu Lions	2008	Lions Memorial	Players from before Seibu bought the Lions in 1978	Box
	2008	Seibu 30th Anniversary	30th Anniversary of Seibu buying the Lions in 1978 (and moving them from Fukuoka to Tokorozawa)	Pack
	2009	Lions 60th Anniversary	Lions 60th Anniversary	Pack
	2010	Lions Classic	Lions throw-back uniforms	Pack
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	2014	Eagles 10th Anniversary	Eagles 10th Anniversary	Pack
Tokyo Yakult Swallows	2009	Yakult 40th Anniversary	40th Anniversary of Yakult buying the Swallows in 1969	Pack
Yokohama DeNA Baystars	2008	Yokohama 30th Anniversary	30th Anniversary of then-Whales moving to Yokohama from Kawasaki	Pack
	2013	Baystars 20th Anniversary	20th Anniversary of Whales changing their name to Baystars	Pack
Yomiuri Giants	2004	Giants 70th Anniversary	Giants 70th Anniversary	Pack
	2013	Giants Legend	Shigeo Nagashima's stints as manger (1975-1980, 1993-2001)	Pack

As you can see from this list, all 12 NPB teams have had at least one OB team set done.  The coverage of a team's history, however, varies greatly from team to team.  While most teams have coverage for their entire history (in theory anyway), for teams are missing large chunks of their history.  The Marines, the Swallows and the Whales all were founded in 1950 but their coverage in the OB teams sets starts in 1969, 1970 and 1978 respectively.  The Fighters have been around nearly 70 years (they started life as the Senators in 1946) but their history prior to 2004 has been ignored.  I'd love to see BBM rectify this for these four teams but I'm not really expecting it to ever happen.