Summer Releases

There's been several new sets announced recently -

- The second of BBM's two annual cheerleader/dance squad sets - "Dancing Heroine - Mai" - will be out by the end of the month (Jambalaya's calendar says July 20th).  Like the earlier "Hana" edition this is a pack-based set with around 90 cards in the base set.  The set features members from the dance teams for all the teams except Orix, DeNA and the Carp (who actually don't have cheerleaders).  There are nine insert cards of an unspecified nature (and I assume that there's one per team) plus autograph cards and "cheki".

- BBM's annual high end set - Genesis - will be out in late September.  The base set will be the usual 108 player cards (9 per team) plus 12 team checklists but this is completely incidental - no one buys Genesis for the base set (except me last year).  Each of the player cards will have parallel versions although they aren't specified on BBM's website - they're usually some sort of color thing on the front of the card.  There are three 12 cards "High Grade" insert sets with each card being serially numbered to 50 - "Elite Of Nine" (some sort of plastic card), "Cross Universe" (holographic processing?) and "Game Changer" (some sort of 3D card using three separate images).  The main draw of Genesis is the memorabilia/autograph cards and this set has them in abundance as usual - including jersey cards featuring two or three players.  Each box contains 20 packs containing five cards each and retails for 12,000 yen (~$107).  Each box is guaranteed to contain one memorabilia/autograph card.

- Epoch is putting out a couple new ultra high end sets.  The "Swallows Stars & Legends" set will be out on July 21st.  Each box contains I think just six cards, retails for 13,600 yen (~$120) and is guaranteed to contain two or more autograph cards.  The base set contains 45 cards - 27 current Swallows players (well 26 and a card of both Norichika Aoki and Tetsuto Yamada) and 18 OB Swallows players.  Each card in the base set has a parallel version and I believe that each card except the afore mentioned Aoki/Yamada card has five different autograph versions.  The Aoki/Yamada one apparently has just one autographed version.

- Epoch's other new ultra high end set is called "Pacific League Rookie Card Set" and it will be released on August 11th.  This is actually a box set - each 10,000 yen (~$88) box contains the entire 39 card base set plus one parallel card and one autographed card.  The parallel card is either a gold or "holo" facsimile autograph parallel.  The autograph card is one of two versions for each card - a vertical "holo" signed card or a horizontal silver signed card.  The base set features all 39 of the non-ikusei 2017 draft picks of the Pacific League teams - obviously the 39 cards do not split evenly between the six teams.

- Hits is putting out yet another "Mini Color Paper" set.  This is another team set for the Baystars called "Baystars - Fierce Battle 2018".  There are 15 players in the set who each have two "cards" each - a "normal" version and a "gilded print sign" version.  The set will be out on August 25th.