A Flood Of 2023 Sets

There's been a bit of flood of new sets getting announced in the three weeks since the last time I did a round up of new releases so let's get to it...

- One of these sets is already out.  The Eagles released their 1st Version set on February 11th - this is essentially the first half of their annual team issued set.  The base set will have 67 cards which I think will based on the team's 70 man roster as of December 9th.  Each base set card has three facsimile signature parallels - a silver one, a rarer gold one and a 1-of-1 crimson one.  There are four insert sets - nine cards celebrating Satoshi Miyamoto's 22 game scoreless appearance streak, twelve cards celebrating Takayuki Kishi getting victories against all 12 NPB team (which includes cards showing him with the Lions), eleven "retro-menko" cards showing the manager and coaches (with a "rock-paper-scissors" symbol on the back!) and four "Stars Of Tohoku" cards.  There are jersey and patch cards for Yuki Matsui and autograph cards for 62 players.  You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.

- It's not quite the end of February and BBM has already announced the first four of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  I decided that instead of my usual attempts to write something different about each of these sets when they're very repetitive, I'd just list them in a table.  Each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which again may not be fully defined yet.  The Treasure, Esperanza and Antique inserts are all serially numbered.  (If it's not obvious, the "Regular Cards", "Treasure", "Esperanza" and "Antique" columns are the total number of those type of cards in each set)

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Antique	Other
Late March	Swallows	68	Flagship (4), Take Over (2), Accelerator (3), Stay Tuned (4)	Stellar (9), Bright Light (3), The Moment Of 56 (3), Coming Up (3)	18	15		Autograph cards
Late March	Fighters	68	Newcomer (3), Pitchers (4), Hitters (6)	Main Players (9), Shinshin (6), Up And Coming (3)	14	15		Autograph cards
Mid April	Tigers	70	Newcomer (4), Pitchers (3), Hitters (4)	Main Players (9), Young Promising (3), Shining Ore (3), Promising Newcomers (3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards, jersey cards for Atsuki Yuasa and Koji Chikamoto
Late April	Marines	69	Expected Break Candidates (4), Combi Cards (5), Team Essentails (3)	Main Players (9), Rookie (3), Roki Sasaki History (6)	24	15	24	Autograph cards, memorabilia cards for two unspecified players

- BBM also announced this year's edition of their annual Icons box set.  The theme this year is Samurai and the focus is on players who have represented Japan along with young players who could do so in the future.  The box contains 37 cards - a 36 card base set and one special card which could be a parallel card, a foil signed card (facsimile, not real autograph) or an "EXTREME" insert card.  The base set is (naturally) broken up into three cards per team and includes Samurai Japan members Munetaka Murakami, Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto along with eight rookies.  The set will hit the shelves in late March.

- Also hitting the shelves in late March (March 27th officially) is Calbee's Series One set.  That's all I know about it right now because for the second year in a row, Calbee has decided not to release the Series One checklist until about a week before the set comes out.  I would expect that it will pretty much be like every other Calbee set for the last ten years or so - the base set will contain 72 "regular" player cards (six per team), either a 20-ish card "Title Holder" subset or a 12 card subset with some theme that ends up working out to one card per team, and four checklist cards along with a 24 card "Star" insert set.  But I could be wrong.

- I mentioned a while back that it was interesting that Epoch and the OB Club didn't do any collaborations last year.  What I hadn't realized at the time was that last year really wasn't over yet, at least when it came to card releases from Epoch (which may explain why they are STILL issuing "2022" Epoch One cards).  Epoch released the "2022 JRFPA set" earlier this month and next month they are issuing TWO of their ultra high end sets in conjunction with the OB Club, both of which are labeled as 2022 products.  The sets are Holografica and Career Achievements.  Both sets will be released on March 18th and each set's boxes will contain six cards (including two autograph cards) and retail for 16,500 yen (~$122).  The base set for Holografica has 53 cards while Career Achievements has 55.  Each base set card has a serially numbered "hologram" parallel card and both sets have a wide variety of autograph cards available,