BBM is finally starting to get caught up on their upcoming releases. They put information for a couple new ones up on their website in the last week or so.
- As I think everyone expected, BBM is issuing an 80th Anniversary set for the Hanshin Tigers. At 81 cards in the base set, this set is smaller than either of the two previous Tigers Anniversary sets - the 70th in 2005 and the 75th in 2010 - which both had 99 cards in the base set. There's pretty much no subsets in the set, just a difference between whether the player is an OB player (66 cards) or a current player (15 cards). There's a 15 card "Tigers Heroes" insert set and the usual assortment of autographed cards. The set will be out in late April.
- The next two of BBM's annual team sets will be for the Buffaloes and the Hawks. Both are pack based sets with 81 cards in their base set. The Buffaloes base set will have 69 "regular" cards (for the manager and players), two checklist cards and an unidentified 10 card subset. There will be three insert sets - "Bs Triplets" (3 cards), "Lockdown Relievers" (6 cards) and "Horn Attack" (9 cards) - and numerous autograph cards, including dual signature ones. The set will be released in early April. The Hawks set will have 68 "regular" cards (for the manager and players) and a number of subsets - a three card Daisuke Matsuzaka puzzle, three "Road To Record" cards, four "2014 Award" cards along with three single card "subsets" - "Next Decade", "2014 Japan" (Nippon Series Champs?) and a checklist. There are two nine card insert sets called "Super Hawks" and "Hyper Hawks" and a wide variety of autographed cards. This set will be out in late April.
3 comments:
Hi. Good day to you!
When can we expect the current crop of Cuba born baseball players, currently playing in NPB, to appear in Japanese baseball cards?
Any information will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
So far the only 2015 set that has been released so far that includes one Cuban player (one of the non-defector Cuban players that is) is Series One from Calbee which was released earlier this week. It has a card for Alfredo Despaigne. The BBM 1st Version set (the largest Japanese card set) will be released in mid-April and I would expect it to have at least Despaigne, Yuliesky Gurriel (because it probably went to press before he got injured) and Frederich Cepeda in it.
I'm not sure if any of the Cuban players other than Cepeda are currently in Japan but assuming that they arrive in the next month or so, I would expect them to be in BBM's 2nd Version set (released in July) and possibly in either of the two other Calbee sets - Series Two (released in June) and Series Three (released in September). They may also appear in BBM's team sets (which could be released any time between now and July).
Cards for anyone other than these five (Despaigne, Cepeda, the brothers Gurriel and Hector Mendoza) will depend on when they sign with an NPB team - obviously the earlier in the season, the more likely they'll show up in a set.
Almost forgot - since I don't really collect the collectible game cards, I don't think about them oftne but Owners League apparently has a Despaigne card out in whatever they've already released this year. I would expect that the other players would show up in sets this year but I don't know when they would be released.
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