2019 In Review - Calbee

Like it was for BBM and Epoch, 2019 was a pretty much regular year for Calbee.  They issued their flagship set as usual in three separate Series.

Series One came out at its usual time in March.  This set had a base set of 98 cards which broke down into 72 player cards (6 per team), 22 "Title Holder" cards and four checklist cards.  The set also had 34 insert/premium subset cards split between the "Star" (24 cards) and "Legend" (10 cards commemorating players who retired in 2018) sets.  There was also a 12 card Limited Edition box set associated with the set called "Strikeout Leader" that featured pitchers from each of the 12 teams.  The box set was available through some sort of "Lucky Card" redemption.

Series Two was released in June and had an 88 card base set split between 72 player cards (again 6 per team), 12 "Opening Day Starting Pitcher" cards and four checklist cards.  It also included the usual 24 card "Star" insert set and also had a 12 card Limited Edition box set called "Hits Leader" available via the "Lucky Card" redemption.

September saw the release of Series Three.  This also had an 88 card base set that again included 72 player cards that again were split evenly among the 12 teams.  There was also a 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset and the usual four checklist cards.  Once again there was a 24 card "Star" insert set with the set plus a 12 card Limited Edition box set called something like "Control Tower" - it featured the starting catcher for each team and was again available via a "Lucky Card" redemption.

There were a total of 216 player cards for the entire set but 24 players had more than one than one card in the set so there are only 192 players represented in the set.  As is usual for Calbee, there are a number of players who appear in the subsets but don't have regular player cards in the set.  This year that group of players includes Yudai Ohno, Tsuyoshi Wada, Randy Messenger, Daichi Ohsera, Hotaka Yamakawa, Takayuki Kishi, Shota Imanaga and Tomoyuki Sugano.  Ohsera, Yamakawa, Kishi and Sugano actually each appear in multiple subsets.

In addition to their flagship set, Calbee also issued a set for the Samurai Japan team.  This was the third time in the past four years they had issued a Samurai Japan set and at 44 cards this was the largest one ever.  The set contained cards for the players who played against Mexico last March as well as a number of the players who took on the MLB All Stars in November of 2018.  For the first time Calbee issued a Limited Edition box set as a "Lucky Card" redemption with a Samurai Japan set - this was an 8 card set that commemorated all the games that Samurai Japan played from November of 2017 until March of 2019 except for the six games played against the MLB All Stars.