Calbee Update And More New Sets

Thought I'd do a quick post on some new sets that have been announced lately plus give an update on Calbee's Series One set.

- First the update:  Calbee released the checklist for their Series One set in advance of the set being released next Monday (well, officially, it'll probably be in card shops this weekend).  A month ago I predicted that the base set would "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".  I was close - there's actually only 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), an 18 card "Title Holder" subset and four checklist cards plus two insert sets - "Star" (24 cards) and "Legend" (8 cards for guys who retired at the end of last season).  The total size of the base set is only 82 cards, the smallest in quite a long time.  

- BBM's announced two more of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  I'm going to continue what I did last time and put the details for these in a table again.  Each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player 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 also 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
Mid May	Hawks	69	Newcomer (4), Starting Pitchers (4), Strong Batting Line (4)	Main Players (9), Task Forces (5), Big Comeback (2), Expected Cannon (2)	16	15		Autograph cards, jersey cards for Isami Nomura, Tomoya Masaki
Late May	Lions	68	Leap Year Man (5), Newcomer (4), Starting Quartet (4)	Main Players (9), Rookies (3), Breakout Candidates (3), 20 Year Combination (3)	16	15		Autograph cards

- The first of Epoch's "Premier Edition" team sets has been announced and it's for the Baystars.  It'll have a a 30 card base set and each card will have a hologram parallel.  The set has a somewhat bewildering amount of inserts - "Regular Printed Signature (Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Gold)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Gold)" (9 cards), "Metal Power (Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Gold)" (18 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram A)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram B)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram C)" (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards), "Gem" (6 cards) and "Black Gem" (6 cards).  I think every player in the set has an "Authentic" and "1 of 1" autograph card and there's also five "Rookie", four "Star" and five "Baseball" autograph cards.  The set will be released on May 13th.

- 216 Co. Ltd (or whatever their name is) is also releasing the "Swallows Used Ball" set on June 10th.  The base set will contain 81 cards although the set only features 16 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.