Second Flagships, Team Sets and a KBO OB Set

It's been about six weeks since I last did a rundown on upcoming sets in Japan so there's actually a lot to talk about.  Starting with a set that I was surprised to discover was actually released TODAY - the Calbee Series Two set.  From what I'd seen on their website, I thought the set was going to be released around the end of the month and they were just going to release the checklist today.  Obviously I was wrong.  The 88 base set is pretty much what you'd expect - 72 "regular" player cards (six per team), a 12 card "OBP Leader" subset and the usual four checklist cards - but the insert cards are a bit different.  Calbee is continuing the celebration of their 50th Anniversary with an insert set featuring reprints of old Calbee cards for eleven of the twelve NPB team managers.  These cards will all feature a "kira" finish and are a continuation of the reprint cards for Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh from Series One.  For God only knows what reason, Calbee decided to not do a card for "BIGBOSS" Tsuyoshi Shinjo in the reprints, even though Shinjo had Calbee cards with both the Tigers and Fighters.  Instead they gave Shinjo a card in the ubiquitous "Star" insert set, making that set 25 cards instead of the usual 24 cards - two cards for every team except the Fighters who now have three.  There's also a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" boxed set that's supposedly available from Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store although I've never been able to find these sets there.  (You can see all the cards from the set over at Jambalaya.)

Speaking of series two sets, BBM recently released some but not a lot of information about their "2nd Version" set which will be out in early August.  They haven't released the number of cards in the set or how the base set is split up although I do expect to still see a "1st Version Update" subset and the rest of the "Cross Grotto" cross set subset.  There's going to be a bunch of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards although I don't know if they'll be short-printed like they were in last year's Fusion set.  There's four insert sets associated with the set - "Wizard", "Coming Hero", "Combo Cross Foil Signing" and "Treasure".  The "Coming Hero" set is the only one I know the size of - 24 cards.  There's also a lot of autographed cards available in the packs, including ones that celebrate Roki Sasaki's perfect game.

BBM has also released information on their final two "comprehensive" team sets for the year - the Tigers and the Fighters.  Both sets feature 81 card base sets and have several non-premium insert sets that contain a total of 18 cards.  The base set for the Tigers set breaks down to 70 cards for the manager and players, a three card subset for recent 1st round draft picks, a three card "Kaito Ranma" subset and a five card "Good ball must-hit" subset.  The non-premium insert sets are described more than actually named - a nine card "Main Player" set, a three card "Expected Rookie" set, a three card "Growing Up" set and a three card "Moment Of Resurrection" set.  There's a whopping 63(!) premium insert cards split among the "Treasure" (24 cards), "Esperanza" (15 cards) and "Antique" (24 cards) sets - I believe all those cards are serially numbered.  The subsets and insert sets for the Fighters set aren't well defined - the base set has 68 cards for the players and manager plus the three card "Young Slugger", three card "Young Relief" and five card "Step-up" subsets.  There's a 9 card "Main Player", 4 card "Rookie" and 5 card "Young People Who Are Growing" insert sets although I don't expect those will actually be the names.  There's 30 premium insert cards - 15 "Treasure" cards and 15 "Esperanza" cards that again I think will be serially numbered.  Both sets also feature a variety of autographed cards and the Tigers set has memorabilia cards as well.  The Tigers set will be out in mid-July and the Fighters set will be out in late-July.

The fifth team to have a "Premier Edition" team set from Epoch this year is the Baystars.  The base set is around 29-ish cards which includes three OB players in addition to the active players (and manager Daisuke Miura).  Each card in the base set has a "holo" parallel.  The set appears to have the standard variety of insert sets that the other "Premier Edition" sets have had - "Regular Printed Signature" cards in various colors, "Metal Power" cards in various colors, "Time To Shine" cards in various colors, "Decomori", "Gem" and "Black Gem" cards.  There's also a big selection of autographed cards.   The set will be released on July 9th.

I was kind of expecting Epoch to do another set with the Japan Retired Foreign Players Association (JRFPA) since last year's set seemed to be popular so I was a bit surprised when the JRFPA teamed up with 216 Co. Ltd (aka Hits or TLC) to do a "mini shikishi" card set that features retired foreign players from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.  The set contains 15 cards and includes players like Brad Eldred, Kris Johnson, Marty Brown and Colby Lewis.  Each box apparently contains at least one autographed card - the boxes retail for 5500 yen and contain ten packs containing one card each.  The set will be out on July 23rd.

216 Co. Ltd (or whatever their name is) is also releasing the "Baystars Used Ball" set on August 4th.  The base set will contain 81 cards although the set only features 18 players.  There's also a variety of special and rare cards available in the packs including real and facsimile autographs and "used ball" and "ball patch" memorabilia cards.

I'm kind of excited about the last set I'm going to mention in this post although I confess to knowing almost nothing about it.  This month SCC is releasing a set in Korea called something like "Korea Baseball Legend" that I'm guessing is tying into the KBO's 40th Anniversary this year.  It looks like it may be the first ever OB player set for the KBO.  All I know about this set is basically from this Twitter thread so I don't know how big the set is or how much it'll be.  I'm just hoping the base set won't be prohibitively expensive.  UPDATE - I had missed a tweet by Dan Skrezyna (Korean Cardboard) with the details about this set.  It's got a 50 card base set with MANY parallels and autograph cards available.  The MSRP for each box is 220,000 won which is around $176 but I don't know what's included in the box - is it packs or is this a box set with chase cards?  The set will be released on June 17th.