2023 In Review - Calbee

2023 was pretty much a run-of-the-mill year for BBM and Epoch but it was anything but for Calbee.  There were three factors that contributed to an extremely disappointing year for Calbee collectors, although only two of them really effected overseas ones.

The first factor became obvious once the checklist for Series One went live early in the year.  Calbee had shrunk the number of "regular" player cards in the Series from the 72 it had been since 2016 to only 60 - so instead of there being six players per team there were only five.  Series Two also contained only 60 "regular" player cards when it was finally released in late August.  Which leads us to the second factor.,,

Calbee only released two Series this year instead of the three that had pretty much been the standard for every year since 2004.  The only exception to that streak was 2017 when the previous year's potato crop had been disrupted by a typhoon and there weren't enough potatoes to make chips with.  That year Calbee only released two Series although they also released a Samurai Japan set late in the year.  There doesn't appear to have been a natural disaster related reason for Calbee only doing two Series in 2023.  The explanation I got from Calbee was pretty much they were delaying Series Two because Series One was so popular.  And then I guess it didn't make sense to issue a Series Three in November.

The third factor was only really a problem for folks living in Japan but it was a major one - the cards were apparently only available in limited release for the first several weeks after their publication.  Series One was released in late March but Sean really didn't start to see the bags of chips in stores until early May.  A similar thing happened when Series Two was released in August (two months later then normal) - it wasn't until October that the cards were available widely.  Series Two also did not include a "Lucky Card" premium, a staple of Calbee's releases for the last 30 years or so.

I've no idea if these factors will be repeated in 2024 although I fully expect that the number of "regular" player cards will remain at 60.  Sean has reported that Japan winning the WBC supposedly played a factor in Calbee's issues with the cards but I would point out that it didn't seem to effect BBM and Epoch.

As for the cards themselves...in addition to the 60 "regular" player cards, Series One contained an 18 card "Title Holder" subset and four checklist cards.  Series Two had a 12 card "First Win" subset and the four checklist cards to go along with the "regular" player cards.  The 2023 Calbee base set then contained a total of 158 cards - 120 "regular" cards, 30 subset cards and eight checklist cards.  There were also two insert sets - 48 "Star" cards distributed across both Series (cards S-01 to S-24 in Series One and S-25 to S-48 in Series Two) and eight "Legend" cards featuring players who retired at the end of 2022 (included in Series One). Additionally there was a limited edition 12 card box set associated with each Series that could only be purchased through Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The sets were "Strikeout Leaders" for Series One and "Speed Star" for Series Two.