A Bevy of New BBM Releases

I mentioned a few weeks back that there was a bunch of upcoming BBM sets that they had not yet mentioned on their website.  They have been doing some catch up in the last week or so, listing six new sets.  Here are the details:

- This year's 1st Version set will apparently be the smallest 1st Version set ever.  The base set will only have 372 cards in it.  The big change is that there will be essentailly no subsets at all.  There will be 324 player cards (27 per team), 12 team checklists (I'm hoping that they are not mascot cards but I'm expecting that they will be) and (after a one year absence) 36 cards for a cross set subset (called "Cross Plasma" this year).  There will also be two 12 card insert sets called "Allrounders" and "Lightning" and the usual plethora of parallels and autograph cards.  The set will be released in mid-April.

- The theme for BBM's annual Icons box set this year is "Ace".  The set will contain 36 cards in its base set that I'm assuming include three pitchers from each team.  The box set will also contain (as usual) one "special" card that could be a parallel or autographed card.  It will be released in late March.

- BBM announced two team specific box sets to be released in late March.  There's Giant Step for the Giants and Horizon for the Fighters.  Both sets contain 28 cards - 27 cards for the base set and one "special" card.  The "special" card for Horizon could be a parallel, an autograph card or a memorabilia card but it's not clear if Giant Step's "special" card is anything other than a parallel.

- BBM also announced the first two of their pack based team sets for the year.  They're starting out this year with the two last place teams from last season - the Swallows and the Eagles.  The base sets for both teams have 81 cards.  The Swallows set has 18 insert cards split into two nine card "Shining Swallows" sets - a silver version and a gold version (I don't think they are parallels of each other - BBM lists both sets separately and the sample cards are quite different).  The Eagles set has two inset sets - a nine card "Shining Shooting Star" set and a three card "Milestone Card" set.  Both sets will include random parallels and autograph cards.  Both sets will be out in late March.

BBM still has not released information on the Tigers 80th Anniversary set or the Buffaloes and Hawks team sets.