Lots Of New Stuff

I've gotten a little behind in reporting the upcoming sets - there are a whole bunch coming up.

- BBM's annual Rookie Edition Premium set will be out late this month (I think on the 30th).  As usual, this is a box set containing (I think) 50 cards - 48 cards in the base set and two (I think) special cards.  The base set has 36 "regular" cards (3 per team) and 12 "Golden Hope" cards (1 per team I assume).  The special cards include parallels of the base cards, memorabilia cards, autograph cards and (again I think) some sort of 3D card.

- BBM has two OB team based boxed sets coming out this week, one for the Hankyu Braves and one for the Nankai Hawks.  These are apparently the initial sets for a new series of sets BBM is doing called ACHIEVEMENT.  Like most other BBM box sets, each set contains the base set plus one special card - definitely facsimile and authentic autographs available, maybe others.  The Braves base set has 30 cards in it while the Hawks base set has 29 cards.  I'll be curious to see where BBM goes with this series as both of these teams have been mined a great deal for OB sets in the last few years.

- Traditionally BBM's first set for each year is their Historic Collection set, usually released in November.  This is the case again for 2015 - the theme this year for the Historic Collection set is "Memories Of Uniforms" and apparently is going to highlight famous uniform designs of the past as well as alternate uniforms from the past few years.  It will be (as usual) a pack based set with 144 cards in the base set. a 24 card insert set and lots of possible autograph cards.  The 144 cards will be split between 72 cards of active players and 72 cards of OB players.  The set will be out in late November.

- Epoch is not letting the fact that BBM has released an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants stop them from releasing their own.  Epoch's version is a box set that is focused on the V9 Giants, the team that won the Nippon Series nine straight years from 1965 to 1973.  Each set contains 49 cards - 46 base cards, two parallel cards and one autographed card.  From the ad sheet, it looks like the set contains everyone you'd think it should - Oh, Nagashima and Masaichi Kaneda being the biggest names.  The set will be out in early November.  The price on the ad sheet is 9800 yen but Discount Niki is listing it for 10,584.  I suspect that this might be a big seller.

- Front Runner is releasing yet two more box sets - another Mizuno cross promotion set, this time with the Marines and a Carp Season Summary set.  The Marines set will have just 17 cards in it but I'm not quite sure how many are in the base set and how many special cards are in the set.  My best guess is that there are 15 base set cards plus one autographed rookie card and one card that could be an autograph card, a memorabilia card or an autographed memorabilia card.  The Carp set (the third Carp set done by Front Runner this year) has 24 cards in the base set plus a possible autograph (facsimile and authentic) card.  The Carp set will be out in late November but the Marines set doesn't have a specific release date, just some time in November or December.  Based on last year, I expect that Front Runner will have a couple more Season Summary sets coming out before the end of the year.