Time to get caught up on the latest announcement of new sets coming out in the next few months...
- Calbee earlier this week finally officially announced the release of the inexplicably delayed Series Two set. As Calbee told me back in mid-June, Series Two will be "released in limited quantities on August 21st and October 9th". Calbee's news release goes on to say that there will be no Series Three this year so for the second time in seven years, Calbee's issuing their set in only two Series. The base set for Series Two will have 60 "regular" card (5 per team), a 12 card "First Win" subset and four checklist cards. There will also be 24 "Star" insert card and Calbee's Amazon.co.jp will be selling a limited edition 12 card "Team Stealing King" box set. The checklist for all the cards is here. I'm not sure why they are listing two release dates but I know Sean had had issues finding Series One for a few weeks after it was originally released so it may be that August 21st is the "limited quantity" release date and October 9th is when it will be more generally available. I have no idea why Calbee's decided to sabotage their set this year - perhaps Elon Musk bought them?
- I mentioned the last time I did a "New Release" post that I thought Epoch was done with their "Premier Edition" team sets this year. I was not correct as they've announced two more of them. The Fighters set will be out on August 26th and the Buffaloes set will be out on September 24th. The Fighters base set has 41 cards (31 active and 10 OB players) and the Buffaloes base set has 40 cards (37 active and 3 OB players). Both sets will have the same massive amount of insert cards as all the other "Premier Edition" sets (and I'm just going copy-paste this from all the other posts I've done for the earlier sets) - "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). Both sets have five possible autograph cards available but they aren't the same in each set - the Fighters have "Authentic", "Rookie", "Star", "One Of One" and "Baseball" while the Buffaloes have "Combo" cards rather than "Star".
- The second of BBM's two annual cheerleader/dance squad sets - "Dancing Heroine - Mai" - will be released in late September. Like the earlier "Hana" set, it's an 80 card set featuring cheerleaders from the Hawks, Eagles, Lions, Marines, Fighters, Swallows, Tigers, Giants and Dragons. There are also nine "Two Shot" insert cards and a number of autograph cards. I believe that there's no overlap between the two sets but I don't know that for sure.
- BBM's releasing the ninth in their OB team history sets in late September. The base set for the Lions History 1950-2023 set will have a similar structure to the previous eight sets - 90 cards split between seven "Team History" cards, 71 cards of OB Lions and 12 cards of active Lions players. There will also be three insert sets - 12 "Lions Dynasty" cards, nine "Team Record" and 12 premium "Treasure" cards - and, of course, lots of autograph cards. With this set there's now only three teams who BBM has not done a "History" set - the Baystars, Eagles and Fighters. I don't have any inside information but I'd be willing to bet that they'll do a "Fighters History" set later this year since it's the 20th year the team has been in Hokkaido and next year they'll do an "Eagles History" set since it'll be their 20th season in existence. They might do the Baystars next year also as it'll be their 75th season and it'll have been five years since BBM did their 70th Anniversary set. Of course, BBM could also do a "Kintetsu Buffaloes History 1950-2004" set next year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the team's demise.
- BBM has also announced the 2023 edition of their multi-sport Infinity set which will be out in late October. The size of the set has not been announced but it looks like it will include 28 NPB players including OB players like Sadaharu Oh and Koji Yamamoto and active players like Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Munetaka Murakami. There's also a card of former JWBL player Yu Katoh and independent league player Hiroyuki Takagishi of the Tochigi Golden Braves (who is also a comedian). There are literally dozens of other sports represented in the set including volleyball, pro basketball, rugby, tennis, BMX, wrestling and karate.
8 comments:
As far as Calbee goes I know the company had to raise prices across the board for a lot of their products last year, I haven't seen their financials but I wouldn't be surprised if it was still facing some financial issues and the baseball card chips are one of the many things caught up in it.
It also looks like the only real bonafide way to get them is to pre-order them on Amazon. It's what all of the flippers who flip the cards and throw out the chips do.
Really wanted akihiro and Bauer in the calbee set :(
@Zippy Zappy - I didn't know that about Calbee. They've been slowly decreasing the size of the set for the last 10-15 years so I wonder if it's been an ongoing issue. I'll end up buying my set from the Amazon flippers but for folks like Sean who want to build the cards via packs with their kids, it really sucks that the packs won't not be in stores until October when the season's pretty much over.
@Anonymous - Bauer hasn't been in ANY set yet this year which is kind of weird
"(B)ut for folks like Sean who want to build the cards via packs with their kids, it really sucks that the packs won't not be in stores until October when the season's pretty much over."
I agree with the sentiment but I get the feeling folks like Sean and his family are in the minority. Considering baseball's dwindling popularity over there it wouldn't surprise me if the most of the consumer base for Calbee cards were old men continuing their collection from their youth.
Is baseball's popularity dwindling in Japan? I don't think I've seen any evidence of that. I could see the popularity of Calbee's baseball cards dwindling, since they pretty much look the same every year and don't have authenticated autographs or memorabilia cards. Although for some that's a plus.
Last I checked soccer is slowly but surely becoming the most popular sport among kids. Add to it how a lot of schools don't have the budgets or personnel to even have baseball teams anymore (I think some schools have to partner with other schools just to form and maintain one club) and well interest even further dwindles among the youth.
I don’t think baseballs popularity is diminishing here. If anything it’s more popular since the wbc and the dominance of ohtani. Which the effects of both of those will be felt for a long time. Along with a couple more rising stars in sasaki and Murakami I think baseball is going to be just fine over here.
There are a few points I want to disagree with in the above conversation.
"Last I checked soccer is slowly but surely becoming the most popular sport among kids."
Gotta disagree pretty strongly with this.
I've been hearing variations of this ever since I moved to Japan in the late 90s. Back then it was the popularity of the newly founded J-League posing a competetive threat, after that the attention soccer recieved from Japan co-hosting the 2002 World Cup - people were thinking that soccer might overtake baseball.
But it never happened. I'm the father of two Japanese kids and baseball is definitely way more popular among kids than soccer is. This isn't to say that soccer isn't also popular, but it still very much takes a back seat.
Evidence of this is all over the place. NPB attendance figures are way higher than J-League. Kids play baseball way more than they play soccer.
"As far as Calbee goes I know the company had to raise prices across the board for a lot of their products last year,"
Actually one of the things that (pleasantly) surprised me this year was that Calbee baseball card chips cost the same at retail as they did last year, supermarkets were all charging 98 Yen per bag (a bit more at convenience stores).
That impressed me since the price of almost everything else on supermarket stores has gone up here. I wouldn't be suprised if it went up next year though.
"I agree with the sentiment but I get the feeling folks like Sean and his family are in the minority."
The flippers who buy in bulk on Amazon are not in the majority, nor are they representative of people who buy Calbee baseball chips. I mean, individually they buy a lot more than the average collector obviously, but they are vastly outnumbered by the number of people who just buy them at retail stores like I do.
Every major supermarket chain (AEON, Apita, Max Value, etc etc) across the country stocks Calbee baseball chips, as do many convenience stores (though not as many as the supermarkets). Collectively that is thousands of brick and mortar stores stocking these in fairly large numbers and selling them to "retail" collectors.
In contrast the population of flippers seems quite small. I know of only about a dozen or so at most who sell them in any quantity on Yahoo Auctions, which is the main sales outlet for them. They are very much a tiny minority. I don't have any problem with them and sometimes buy from them, but I'm just pointing out that they aren't in the majority.
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