Spring Is Coming

It's been about a month since the last time I did a round up of the new sets coming out, there's been a bunch more announced and I'm going to too busy to post much for the next week or so which means it's probably time for another roundup.  So without further ado...

- The 2024 edition of BBM's annual "Icons" box set will be out in late March and is called "Icons - Generations".  While that name might lead you to believe that the set will feature veterans as well as younger players, you'd be wrong.  The set apparently will only include younger players.  The web page touts Roki Sasaki, Hiroya Miyagi and Yasunobu Okugawa as being in the set along with nine rookies.  Each box contains 37 cards - the complete 36 card base set (three cards per team) and one "special" insert card which could be a "foil print" card, an "EXTREME2024" rookie card, a "Foil Autograph" card or a "Handwritten autograph" card.  There are parallel versions of the "foil print" and "EXTREME2024" cards.  The "Foil Autograph" cards only include the three Giants players since Yomiuri does not allow their players to have authentic autographs in any card sets.

- BBM has announced the first three of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  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 Magical inserts are all serially numbered.  (If it's not obvious, the "Regular Cards", "Treasure", "Esperanza" and "Magical" columns are the total number of those type of cards in each set.)  In addition, I think there's a significant subset of the player cards (12 players plus the 2023 draftees) for the Hawks and Tigers which will have parallels with different photos (which are not being referred to as "secret" versions for some reason).

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Magical	Other
Early April	Hawks	64	Promising Newcomers(3), Keio Trio(1), Transfer Players(2), Powerful Pitchers(5), Main Fielders(6)	Main Players(9), New Players(3), Specialist(4), Reliable Veteran(2)	24	15	24	Autograph cards; memorabilia cards for Carter Stewart, Yugo Bando and Kensuke Kondoh
Early April	Baystars	67	Boost(3), Yokohama Bond(6), Discovery(2), Headliner(3)	Alpha(9), Explosion(6), Blooming(3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards
Mid April	Tigers	67	Newcomer(3), Title Holders(7), On The Rise(4)	Main Players(9), New Players(3), Reliable Pitcher(3), Promising Young Players(3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards; memorabilia cards for Teruaki Sato and Shota Morishita

- Not to be left out, Epoch has released information about the first two of their "Premier Edition" team sets - the Swallows and the Baystars.  The Swallows set has a base set of 40 cards - 37 active players and three OB players.  The promo materials for the Baystars set says the base set has 40 cards but it actually lists 51 cards - 44 active players and seven OB ones.  Both sets have a gazillion inserts that I honestly don't feel like listing, especially since they don't have the same ones - check out the links if you want to see the names of all 15.  Both sets feature five different types of player autograph cards - "Authentic", "Star", "Rookie", "Legendary" and "Combo".  The Swallows set also includes "mascot combo" autographed cards and something called "Tsubakurou's Flip" which I'm not quite sure is.  The Swallows set will be released on April 20th and the Baystars set will be out a week later on the 27th.

- Calbee's Series One set will be released on April 1st which is about all I can tell you about it as Calbee's not releasing the checklist for it until March 27th (the same irritating thing they've done for the last three years).  I'm not sure but I think the webpage says something about the cards not being in wide release until April 15th although I certainly could be misunderstanding the Google Translation.