New Releases

I wanted to do a quick round up of some newly announced and newly released sets.

- BBM doesn't have anything about it on their website yet but they will be releasing their annual pack-based Lions team set on May 29.  As has been standard for the past couple years the base set will have 81 cards which include 68 "regular" player cards, 6 "Catch The Moment" cards, 3 "Accelerator" cards and 4 "Reign Men" cards.  There are 30 insert cards split between "Sparkling" (3 cards), "Rocket Arms" (3 cards), "Big Bangs" (3 cards), "Pride Of Lions" (9 cards) and the ubiquitous "Phantom" (12 cards).  There will also be randomly inserted autograph cards.

- Hits has announced a new "Mini Color Paper" set.  Instead of a team this time the set is to commemorate Yasuaki Yamasaki's 100th career save.  There are 16 possible "cards" - 8 normal ones and 8 "gilded print signed special" ones.  The set will be released May 25th.

- The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have released their annual team set.  This is available in boxes of 20 packs of six cards.  The base set contains 98 cards - 81 "regular" player cards (including 14 ikusei players), 10 "New Uniform" cards, and single cards commemorating the Eagles rookie class, Takahiro Norimoto's 8 straight 10+ strikeout games last year, Ryo Hijirasawa's 1000th game played, Koji Aoyama's 500th pitching appearance, Ginji Akaminai's Golden Glove award and Ginji and Zelous Wheeler's Best 9 Awards.  There are also 10 "Tohoku Pride" insert cards (which I think are die-cut), two possible jersey/patch memorabilia cards and 40 possible autographed cards.  Jambalaya has all the cards online here.

- @lovelovemarines gave me a heads up the other day that Lotteria, a convenience store chain in Japan that I think is owned by Lotte, has some promotion going on that involves a 10 card set of Chiba Lotte Marines baseball cards.  I did a little searching on the internet and found a news release about it but unfortunately it's a scanned in version of the press release so I can't have Google translate it.  I think the cards are given away with a meal from the store that comes in a box that features the Marines "mysterious fish" mascot.  The 10 cards include cards for 8 players (Takashi Ogino, Katsuya Kakunaka, Daichi Suzuki, Shogo Nakamura, Shohei Kato, Chihaya Sasaki, Tatsuhiro Tamura and Kota Futaki), manager Tadahito Iguchi and the Marines' 2018 rookie class.  I believe that the meals with the cards are available from Opening Day (March 30) until the end of the season (October 2).  I'm not sure if there are available at all Lotterias, only Lotterias in Chiba or only at the Marines' ballpark.  This is the picture of an ad for the set that @lovelovemarines shared with me:

- For the third year in a row Nippon-Ham is releasing a Fighters' team set with their "Home Run Sausage" product.  The checklist for their first series is on-line - there's 74 cards that includes a card for manager Hideki Kuriyama, four cards for their mascots and 69 cards for the Fighters' players.

- After SMG lost their KBO license early last year there have been no KBO cards beyond a couple team issued sets.  That will change later this week when a new company, SCC, releases their first set.  It will be available in boxes of 20 packs of 7 cards.  The base set will have 224 cards.  In addition there will be 50 "rare" cards, 22 "rookie" cards, 10 Jersey cards, 50 "limited" cards, and 63 autographed cards.  George broke the news on this and has all the details here.  The boxes are retailing for 60,000 won (~$56) but can be found on-line for a little less than that (54,000 won or ~$51).