2024 Topps NPB Set

I wasn't going to buy it this year.

The 2024 Topps NPB set was released around May 24th, right around the end of my trip to Japan.  I figured that no store would have had time to put together a complete set before I left but I bought a pack of cards at Mint Yokohama and looked at the set at Jambalaya.  

What I saw confirmed that basically the set repeated the stuff that I had hated about last year's set - all the photos were from last year, no players who switched teams over the winter were in the set, no new import players were in the set (I think there's only five gaijin total in the set) and the photos of the rookie players and new managers were all posed photos from press conferences or team's photo days.  Oh, and they put the same level of effort that they've put into the card backs as the three previous years - none.

I was still thinking about buying the set when I came back so I started checking Yahoo! Japan Auctions and Mercari.  No one was selling a complete set.  I kept checking regularly for a few weeks - nothing.  Ryan hadn't seen any either.  The only complete set I had seen for sale was from Jambalaya but they were asking 12000 yen for it - around $75.  There was no way I was going to spend that much on the set.

Not being able to find the set let me think more about whether or not I really wanted to get it.  The few pros - some of the photos are good, my OCD is happy if I have a full run of Topps sets - were far outweighed by the cons listed above.  So I decided that I wasn't going to get the set this year.

I was pretty happy with this decision for a few days.  I was so convinced that I wasn't going to get the set that I went through the cards at Jambalaya and decided on 20 or so that I wanted to get as singles.  I decided to contact my friend Jason who sells NPB cards on Ebay and has been my source for a lot of Topps NPB cards the past few years, figuring that I ask him about those singles.  I asked him how hard it had been to put a set together this year and he said it wasn't too bad - it was taking about a box and a half of cards.  He offered to sell me one at whatever price I wanted. Not wanting to take too much advantage of his generosity, I told him what I had paid for the set the past couple years.  He suggested a price in that ballpark for a complete set plus a couple of the "retro" insert cards and I decided to change my mind.  I got the set early last week and my opinion of it really hasn't changed so I'm essentially hate-posting about it.  (But I do want to thank Jason for his generosity!)

Some details about the set - this is the fourth edition of Topps' NPB flagship set and, like the previous three, it has a base set of 216 cards which works out to 18 cards per team.  Those 18 cards include the team's manager and three 2023 draftees (probably the top three but I didn't bother checking to verify that).  The previous editions featured a card design that was similar but not quite identical to that of that year's Topps MLB flagship set.  This year, however, I think the design IS identical for the first time.

With the set being relatively small, there are a number of players that were left out.  Besides the players who changed teams over the winter, there are no cards for Yudai Ohno, Atsuki Yuasa, Aren Kuri, Kohei Azuma, Takahisa Hayakawa, Yasuhiro Ogawa or Yuta Kyoda, all of whom appeared in BBM's 1st Version set.  On the other hand, this set has a number of players I was kind of surprised weren't in the BBM set - Hirokazu Sawamura, Livan Moinelo, Ryutaro Umeno, Cy Sneed and Tyler Austin.  I expect that at least a couple of those guys will have cards in BBM's 2nd Version set when it gets released next month.

Topps generally had decent photos in their sets (at least for the non-rookies).  I'd rate their photo selection second of the four NPB flagship sets, behind BBM but ahead of Epoch (and far ahead of Calbee at this point).  I still don't like the processing stuff Topps does to their photos though.  Here's some examples:

#106

#190

#148

#68

Topps also uses the horizontal format as well as BBM does, making what would be just ordinary "batters batting, pitchers pitching" photos look better.  (For comparison's sake, Epoch never does horizontally formatted cards while Calbee used to but doesn't bother anymore.)  Here's a couple examples:

#101

#118

#137

#47

I really like that Ohshiro card - I think it really captures his anticipation of catching the ball and tagging the runner out.

I've already complained about how the cards of the rookie players (2023 draft picks) were posed shots from either press conferences or photo day.  Here's a variety of these.  Personally I prefer cards of players actually on the field - BBM's got the "posed shot at the introductory press conference" cards down pat with the Rookie Edition set so I don't need more cards showing that.

#84

#176

#33

Topps used photos similar to Koja's for the three new managers for 2024 - Hiroki Kokubo, Toshiaki Imae and Shinnosuke Abe.  Curiously they also used similar photos for Hiroyuki Nakajima and Masato Yoshii too.

I noticed an error on one of the cards - Yuki Nishi of the Tigers has his name transposed on the front of the card where his family name ("Nishi") is in small letters on the top and his given name ("Yuki") is in larger letters on the bottom.  I don't know if Topps is correcting the card.

#200

I mentioned that once again Topps put minimal effort into the card backs.  Here's Roki Sasaki's as an example:

Every year Topps has a number of parallels and inserts with their set and every year the only one I'm really interested in is the one in which they reuse an old card design for active NPB players.  So far they've done the 1986 format with the 2021 set, the 1958 format with the 2022 set and the 2001 format with last year's set.  Of these, I've felt that they did the best job matching the "spirit" of the 1986 set.  All the photos used were action shots which were not uncommon in that set.  The 1958-style inserts ended up being done as a mug shot set rather than a variety of posed shots like the original set had and the 2001-style inserts had white borders rather than green for some reason.

For this set, Topps revisited the 1959 format and I have mixed feelings about the results.  They matched the design well but they again used action photos and the original 1959 set used posed photos.  I may just be nitpicking though and since Topps seems to think that "posed photo" means "mug shot", the action photos are probably better than the alternative.  Here's the cards that Jason sent me:

#59-12

#59-8

#59-14

#59-15

#59-16

I beat up on Topps a lot and I feel there's a good reason for it.  One of the things I've liked about Japanese baseball cards is that the sets are usually as up-to-date as they can possibly be when they go to press.  This is not the case with Topps' MLB sets.  For example, Topps Series Two was just released about a month ago and it includes a card of Gio Urshela with the Los Angeles Angels.  The problem with that is that Gio Urshela is a Detroit Tiger and has been since February.  It's really uncommon for something like that to happen with an NPB set but it seems pretty common with MLB ones.  I'm fairly certain that no Japanese baseball card has ever featured a player in an airbrushed or photoshopped hat and/or uniform (unless it was to remove a tradmark).  It boggles my mind that BBM can issue an up-to-date set in April (or March!) with photos that were taken in February but Topps is incapable of publishing an up-to-date set a month later.  What it tells me is that Topps isn't trying very hard with their NPB product.

And apparently they don't need to because for some completely inexplicable reason, the cards are popular, at least in the US.  I guess just having the Topps name on them makes Americans want to buy them despite their shortcomings.  I was flabbergasted recently when a long-time collector told me he really liked the Topps cards.  I just don't get it.

Honestly, I wouldn't care so much - I mean, it's a big hobby and to each his own - but I'm kind of worried about the influence their laziness is having on the rest of the card industry in Japan.  Calbee seems to have pretty much given up really putting any effort into their set anymore and Epoch has done a similar thing with the rookie cards in their NPB set this year that Topps did.  I really don't like this trend and I'm hoping BBM doesn't succumb as well.

I realize that I may be overly concerned but part of what got me into NPB cards was the decline in quality of MLB cards in the late 1990's.  I don't want NPB cards to go down the same path but perhaps, like Jimmy Mattingly, I'm alone in my principles (although hopefully not as much of a jerk).