2021 BBM Tigers History 1935-2021

BBM published yet another OB team set in their "History" line back in late October.  The subject of this one was the Hanshin Tigers and the set is entitled "Tigers History 1935-2021".  It is the fifth set in the series following ones last year for the Carp and Giants and this year for the Dragons and Marines.  It was followed a month later by a set for the Buffaloes which I'll be doing a post for in the next few days.  Like the previous sets, this set splits the 90 cards in its base set into three parts - "Team History", OB players and active players.  

The seven "Tigers History" cards cover the team's history since their founding in 1935.  Each card highlights a 12-14 year period of time.  The front of each card shows some highlight of the stretch of years the card covers while the backs list the team's finish in each year of the featured time period.  Here's the card that includes the Tigers' sole Nippon Series championship:

#05

The OB player cards make up most of the set.  There are 68 OB players included which is the lowest amount of any of the five sets so far.  The set includes many of the Tigers greats that you'd expect - Yoshio Yoshida, Masaaki Koyama, Masayuki Kakefu, Tomoaki Kanemoto, Koichi Tabuchi, Akinobu Okada, Taira Fujita, Akinobu Mayumi, Takahiro Arai and Kyuji Fujikawa.  There's one foreign player - Randy Bass - along with several former Tigers who were still active with other NPB teams - Kosuke Fukudome (Dragons), Atsushi Nohmi (Buffaloes), Takashi Toritani (Marines) and Yamato (Baystars).  The set also includes one player who I don't think has had a BBM card before - Yutaka Ikeuchi.

As was the case for the Dragons and Marines sets, this set doesn't appear to include any players who have passed away and couldn't sign an autograph.   So a whole bunch of guys who had appeared in earlier BBM OB Tigers sets like Masaru Kaguera, Minoru Murayama, Fumio Fujimura, Shigeru Kobayashi, Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi, Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Kaoru Bettoh, Takeshi Doigaki and Gene Bacque aren't in the set.  Yutaka Enatsu and Tsuyoshi Shinjyo aren't in the set either but both are still breathing.  Enatsu may have an exclusive deal with Epoch as he hasn't been in a BBM set since 2014 but appears in Epoch ones fairly regularly.  Shinjyo hasn't been in a BBM set since 2015 (although obviously he'll be in them starting next year).  There's several foreign players who wouldn't have been out of place in the set - Matt Murton, Randy Messenger or Tom O'Malley - but they do not appear.

The cards use a similar design as the previous "History" sets and, like the ones in the previous sets, are quite attractive.  BBM seem to have really gone out of their way to pick out some nice photos to use in these sets and this one is no exception.  There's a good mix of posed and action shots and only a couple black and white photos.  Here's a bunch of examples:

#72

#21

#09

#58

#62

#49

#18

#74

#25

The final subset in the set is for active players.  There are 15 cards in it which are the most of any of the five "History" sets.  The cards use the same design as the OB cards except they have their backgrounds tinted yellow.  My biggest gripe with these cards is that the photo selection is back to BBM's usual boring standards - the "batters batting, pitchers pitching and catchers catching" poses.  The one exception was this card of Takumi Nakano:

#88

The other players in the subset include Takumi Akiyama, Koji Chikamoto, Shintaro Fujinami, Fumihito Haraguchi, Yoshio Itoi, Yusuke Ohyama, Robert Suarez and (of course) Teruaki Sato.

#78

As always all the cards (including the insert sets) can be seen over at Jambalaya.