Last month Calbee issued a set for the Samurai Japan, the Japan National Baseball team. I suppose to be completely accurate I should point out that this set is for the professional version of the team - there's several different amateur versions (college, U18, U15, etc plus a woman's team which I think is professional). This is the first set dedicated to the Japan National team since
BBM's box set for the 2008 Olympic team and the first Japanese set to feature the team since
the 2009 Konami WBC Heroes set. This is also the first time Calbee has done cards for the team since the 2001 subset for the 2000 Olympic team.
The set contains 36 cards - one card for team manager Hikoki Kokubo and 35 cards for the players. Let's see if I can phrase this right - the set contains all the Samurai Japan players who played in either the Premier 12 last November or the two friendlies against Taiwan this past March AND who spent the 2016 season in NPB. Another way to say it would be that the set contains all the Samurai Japan players who played in either the Premier 12 last November or the two friendlies against Taiwan this past March except Kenta Maeda. This includes most of the big names in NPB - Shohei Ohtani, Tetsuto Yamada, Sho Nakata, Shogo Akiyama, Hayato Sakamoto, Yoshitomu Tsutsugoh, Tomoyuki Sugano and Ryosuke Kikuchi. There are three Nakamura's in the set - Akira, Takeya and Yuhei. There's at least one representative from every NPB team with the exception of Hanshin. The entire checklist can be seen
here at Calbee's website (in Japanese of course).
The cards themselves resemble the "Star" insert cards from the regular Calbee sets - they picture the player superimposed over a false background and have a kira finish. There's a parallel version with a large gold facsimile signature on the card as well. I'm not a big fan of this look but I'm happy that this set exists so I'll live with it. The downside is that the cards don't scan particularly well - they look much better in person. Here's some examples:
 |
| #SJ-36 |
 |
| #SJ-23 |
 |
| #SJ-15 |
 |
| #SJ-07 |
 |
| #SJ-18 |
 |
| #SJ-13 |
I very much like this set and I'm hoping that Calbee will continue to issue them in the future.
All the cards can be seen at
Jambalaya.
3 comments:
Cool set. I'll be cheering for them in March.
I am with you, I like that this set exists but am not super happy with the design mimicking the Star Card sets.
The main reason I like them is that it lets me continue to buy Calbee chips during the off-season (these are currently in stock at my local convenience store), which has never happened before.
I'd really prefer cards that look like the regular cards rather than the Star cards. With my scanner the "kira" finish on the cards makes all the players look like they're playing in a snowstorm.
Post a Comment