2016 Calbee Series Three

Going to start getting caught up on posts I wanted to to while in testing hell but seeing as I'll be on the road next week, I don't think I'm going to get very far...

Calbee Series Three was released about a month ago.  At 88 cards, it's the same size as Series Two which was the smallest Calbee Series in recent memory.  There's 72 player cards (six per team, numbered 145 to 216), 12 "Exciting Scene" subset cards and four checklist cards.

While the first two Series of the year didn't have any duplication of players in the "regular" cards, the "regular" cards from the third Series has around 30 players who appeared in the first two sets, including Shintaro Fujinami, Yoshio Itoi, Sho Nakata, Hayato Sakamoto, Daichi Suzuki, Kazuo Matsui and Yuki Matsui.  Other players in the set include Ernesto Mejia, Takehiro Norimoto, Dennis Sarfate, Hideaki Wakui, Takeya Nakamura and Seiya Suzuki.  As usual, the photography for the cards is very good.

#164 Yuji Onizaki

#162 Yoshifumi Okada

#153 Sho Nakata

#187 Hayato Sakamoto

#175 Yuki Matsui

#201 Ryosuke Kikuchi

#198 Shintaro Fujinami

The "Exciting Scene" subset features an "exciting scene" (obviously) for each of the 12 teams during the first part of the season.  This includes Rick Van Den Hurk setting the record for most consecutive wins at the beginning of an NPB career, Shohei Ohtani setting the record for fastest pitch at 163 kph (which he has since upped twice), Chihiro Kaneko getting his 100th career victory and Kosuke Fukudome and Takahiro Arai getting their 2000th hits.  Here's the card of Tetsuto Yamada which commemorates him hitting home runs against each of the other 11 NBP teams this year:

#ES-07

The four checklist cards (numbered C-9 to C-12 as a continuation of the checklist cards in the earlier two Series) show highlights from the early part of the season - Yoshihisa Hirano's 100th save, Kazuki Yoshimi getting his first win in 379 days, Louis Okoye's first hit and (I think) Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh's two home run game vs the Dragons on May 10th.  Here's the Hirano card:

#C-9

As always you can see all the cards in the set (including the "Star" premium insert set and the "Lucky Card" box set) at Jambalaya.