2021 & 2022 Epoch One cards

Among the cards I got from Ryan in that big box last week were a bunch of Epoch One cards.  Epoch One is basically the NPB equivalent of Topps Now - on demand cards available for a limited amount of time on the card maker's website.   In the case of Epoch One, the cards are available for three days and cost 500 yen each.  The kind of odd thing about Epoch One is not all the teams participate.  The line up of teams has changed a bit over the five years Epoch has been doing the cards but for 2021 and 2022 they were the Chiba Lotte Marines, Chunichi Dragons, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, Hanshin Tigers, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Saitama Seibu Lions, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, Tokyo Yakult Swallows and Yomiuri Giants.*

* To be completely accurate, the 2022 set did include a handful of Baystars cards but they weren't issued until February of 2022.  I get into that a little bit by the end of the post.

I had gotten a bunch of 2021 Epoch One cards from Ryan in the last box he sent me so there were only a handful of additional one from that year this time.  Let's go through them real quick.

Justin Smoak had signed with the Giants in January of 2021 but wasn't able to actually arrive in Japan until the end of March.  He debuted with the team in late April but only played with them until mid-June when he left the team and Japan because his family was not able to join him overseas.  He arrived in Japan too late to be included in BBM's 1st Version set, Epoch's NPB set or Calbee's Series One or Two sets and had left by time BBM's 2nd Version and Calbee Series Three sets went to press so he was not included in them either (the early promotional images for 2nd Version included a "1st Version Update" card for him so BBM had been planning on including him until he left the country).  The five Epoch One cards he had were the only NPB cards that I know Smoak had.  I found an auction for one of those cards and asked Ryan to pick it up for me - this is the only one of this batch of Epoch One cards that I got on the secondary market.  The card shows Smoak hitting his first NPB home run on April 28th against the Swallows:

#195

On August 15th of 2021, Carter Stewart made his first start for the ichi-gun Hawks and combined with five other Hawks pitchers to no-hit the Fighters.  It's not officially a no-hitter though since NPB doesn't recognize no-hitters thrown by more than one pitcher.  Additionally the Hawks didn't score any runs that day and the game ended after nine innings as a 0-0 tie (no extra innings in 2021) so Stewart didn't even get a win for his efforts.

#448

Takumi Kuriyama of the Lions got his 2000th hit on September 4th:

#519

Also on September 4th, Yusuke Ohyama of the Tigers hit a sayonara home run to beat the Giants:

#531

Speaking of beating the Giants, Yasunobu Okugawa shut them out in the first game of the Final Stage of the Climax Series on November 10th:

#723

There were two other 2021 cards I asked Ryan to pick up just because they featured alternate uniforms - in case I ever update my uniform posts:

#469

#533

Unlike Topps, Epoch includes the number of cards in the print run for each card on the back on the card back (although Epoch does not publish this number online anywhere).  Of these particular Epoch One cards, the Kuriyama card had the biggest print run (428) while the Genda card above had the smallest (23).

Munetaka Murakami had a big year in 2022 and Epoch One did 50 cards for him (out of a total of 1040 cards so far) - the most for any player.  I got three of these cards.  I shared one of them last weekend and the other two featured his five home run performance in two consecutive games.  He had three home runs in the game on July 31st and two more in the game on August 2nd (with an off day on August 1st).  This card is for the three home run game:

#601

This card features the second home on August 2nd (there was a card for the first home run also but I didn't get it):

#615

There were three Epoch One cards for Roki Sasaki's perfect game last April 10th - one for the perfect game itself, one for the 13 consecutive strikeouts and one for the 19 total strikeouts:

#108

#109

#110

Sasaki threw eight perfect innings in his next start againt the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters before being lifted for a relief pitcher.  Epoch One issued two cards for this game - one for the eight perfect innings and another commemorating both the 17 consecutive perfect innings he'd thrown and his streak of 25 consecutive innings with a strikeout.

#138

#139

Wait, did I say there were two Epoch One cards for this game?  There were actually three.  Echoing the Stewart combined no-hitter the previous year, the Marines hadn't scored any runs either.  The game was again a 0-0 tie after nine innings but last year games resumed having extra innings.  In the tenth inning Nippon-Ham got their only hit of the game and it was a big one - a solo home run from Chusei Mannami which ended up being the game winner for the Fighters:

#143

Sasaki wasn't the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter last year.  There were four others although two of them - Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Buffaloes and Shota Imanaga of the Baystars - were thrown by players on teams that Epoch One didn't do any cards for.  However there were cards issued for the no-hitters for Nao Higashihama of the Hawks and Cody Ponce of the Fighters:

#254

#750

Additionally Yudai Ohno of the Dragons threw 9 2/3 perfect innings on May 6th before giving up a hit to Teruaki Satoh of the Tigers.  Satoh didn't score and the Dragons rallied for a run in the bottom of the tenth so Ohno got a complete game, one hit, ten inning shutout victory:

#238

There were other highlights from last year other than Murakami home runs and no-hitters and near no-hitters that I got Epoch One cards for.  On Opening Day Freddy Galvis of the Hawks hit a grand slam in the eighth inning to propel Softbank to a 4-1 win over the Fighters:

#041

On April 16th Haruki Nishikawa of the Eagles celebrated his 30th birthday by hitting a two run home run off Yudai Mori of the Hawks in the top of the ninth to put the Eagles over the top 6-5:

#145

On April 29th Teruaki Satoh of the Tigers absolutely crushed a pitch from Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants.  I'm pretty sure he hit the back wall of the Tokyo Dome in right field.

#208

Akira Neo of the Dragons converted from being a position player to being a pitcher last year.  This card commemorates his first ichi-gun appearance on the mound on May 21st:

#299

Takeya Nakamura had a walk off home run against Orix on August 4th:

#631

The Swallows clinched their second straight Central League pennant on September 25th on rookie Kazuya Maruyama's RBI double in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Baystars:

#876

Maruyama wasn't the only rookie I picked up an Epoch One card for.  Last year's class wasn't quite as impressive as 2021's so I didn't have quite the case of "rookie fever" but I did ask Ryan to pick up cards for two players who made their debut's on Opening Day:

#018 (Taisei Ota)

#030 (Kou Matsukawa)

As was the case in 2021, there were a handful of cards I asked Ryan to pick up because they featured alternate uniforms:

#061 (Hayato Sakamoto)

#186 (Masanori Ishikawa)

#574 (Tomoya Mori)

#604 (Masahiro Tanaka)

#807 (Takeya Nakamura)

Finally Epoch One issued cards for the players picked in the regular phase of the 2022 draft by the Dragons and the Swallows.  This is the first time since the 2020 set that Epoch One included draft pick cards.  I won't show all the cards - there's seven Dragons and five Swallows - but I will show the two first round picks - Reia Nakachi of the Dragons and Kojiro Yoshimura of the Swallows:

#988

#1004

Epoch actually continued to produce "2022" cards up until a couple weeks ago - there have been 31 2022 cards issued in 2023.  The majority of these cards are additional draft pick cards as they've added cards for the 2022 draft classes for the Giants, Fighters, Baystars and Marines.  The Baystars cards are interesting since Epoch didn't do Epoch One cards for DeNA in 2022.  With draft pick cards for six teams, Epoch One has basically produced half of a very expensive Rookie Edition set.

The card with the highest print run is the first of the three cards for Roki Sasaki's perfect game (#108) which had 7258 copies made.  I believe that's the highest print run for any Epoch One card ever.  The print runs for the other two cards for the perfect game were quite high as well with 5458 copies of #109 and 5050 copies of #110.  At the other end of the range, the lowest print run I know of is for the Tomoya Mori card (#574) - 27 copies.