2015 KBO "Baseball Best Player" set

I picked up a box of the latest KBO product from Duael Entertainment (at least I think that's the name that the manufacturer used to go by but it may have changed to SMG Holdings or maybe SMG bought out Duael), the same folks who've issued the "Super Star Baseball" KBO sets over the last two years.  This set is a little different than the earlier sets and for the most part I think the changes are for the better.

Rather than buy a box from someone on Ebay, this time I ordered the box from Gmarket, using a link that Dan Skrezyna had sent me.  Gmarket is a shopping market website like Rakuten Global Market or Amazon where sellers can list items instead of having to have their own website.  The cost of the box (including EMS shipping) was $36 which is roughly what I had paid on Ebay for the Season One and Season Two boxes this year.

Unopened Box

Opened Box

Wrapper

The box contains 20 packs, each of which contains eight cards - seven "regular" card and one parallel card.  There are no short printed cards and I don't think there are any memorabilia or autograph cards although I could be wrong.  There are just the base set cards and the parallels which I will get into more detail about momentarily.

There are 100 cards in the base set - 10 for each of the 10 teams in the KBO.  Each team's cards are numbered separately, kind of like the 2010 KBO game set's cards.  So the 10 cards for the Doosan Bears are numbered PA01-DO001 to PA01-DO010, the Hanwha Eagles cards are numbered PA01-HA001 to PA01-HA010, etc.  

And this set is clearly a collectible card game set.  Each card has numbers on the front labeled "ATK" and "DEF" that are used for game play.  The backs of the cards are identical.  There's a video posted to the official blog of the set showing game play:

I don't know where they got the game sheet from.

Here's some examples:

#PA01-LO005 (Joon-Seok Choi)

#PA01-NC006 (Seok-Hun Ji)

#PA01-LG010 (Kang-Nam Yoo)

#PA01-KI002 (Min-Woo Kim)

#PA01-KT009 (Si-Hwan Jang)

PA01-DO004 (Soo-Bin Jung)

Card Back

It looks like the 10 cards for each team are a line up - nine position players plus DH.  At least it looks like each team only has one pitcher included.  I don't pretend to know enough about KBO teams to figure out if these players make up the regular lineup for the teams but since once again their aren't any foreign players in the set, I would guess not.

There are four types of parallel cards available.  The most common are the kira parallels.  These are only parallels for card #003 for each team.

#PA01-SK003 Kira Parallel (Dong-Hwa Cho)

Next most common are the gold kira parallels.  There are only parallels for card #002 for each team.

#PA01-HA002 Gold Kira Parallel (Jin-Haeng Choi)

Only slightly less common are the Gold Facsimile Signature parallels.  As you might guess from the progression, these are only parallels of card #001 from each team.

#PA01-NE001 Gold Facsimile Signature Parallel (Byung-Ho Park)

The most rare parallel is the Clear parallel.  These are also only parallels for card #001 for each team.

#PA01-SA001 Clear Parallel (Seung-Yuop Lee)

So the box should have 160 cards in it in all - 140 base set cards and 20 parallels.  My box broke down as follows:

94 unique base set cards
43 duplicate base set cards
10 Kira Parallel cards (7 unique)
5 Gold Kira Parallel cards
4 Gold Facsimile Signature Parallel cards
1 Clear Parallel card

As you've probably already noticed, the math doesn't quite work out.  Somehow I can only account for 137 of the expected 140 base set cards.  I really have no idea what happened - it doesn't look like there are any cards stuck together and it doesn't look like I dropped any so there must have been a couple packs short of cards.  I'd be interested in finding out if others have had the same experience.

This is one of the most approachable KBO sets since the Teleca sets from 1999-2000.  It's theoretically possible to get a complete base set from a single box and there's none of the short prints that have made the earlier sets so frustrating.  On the other hand, it appears that there are no memorabilia or autograph cards which may make the set less attractive to many collectors.

I want to thank Dan Skrezyna for his help with this set - sending me the link for the set on Gmarket, translating the set name for me (somewhere along the line the phrase "hell's fireball" showed up as a possible set name) and even providing the image at the top of the post.