I'm finishing up my review of 2025's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.
Bushiroad returned this past year with updates to their DreamOrder collectible card game that was initially released in 2024. They released a booster pack set for each of the 12 NPB teams which were released in pairs throughout the year with the Giants and Tigers sets coming out in March; the Buffaloes, Lions, Carp and Dragons getting released in April; the Hawks, Eagles, Baystars, and Swallows hitting stores in May and the Fighters and Marines getting published in June. They also released two other sets in September - a Samurai Japan set that appears to be team set for the 2024 Premier 12 team (which furthers my confusion about the Samurai Japan license holder) and a "Heroes Of 2025" set that features some of the top players from each team.
Bandai returned with a second edition of their "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection", their collaboration with Namco that was distributed with packets a snack called "kaki no tane". Like their 2024 set, this was a 36 card set featuring caricatures of players.
Epoch and the Eagles collaborated on a "comprehensive" team set for the second year in a row. I was a bit surprised when I realized that there was only one of these sets released in 2025 since the Eagles have done two - labeled "1st Version" and "2nd Version" - almost every year since at least 2018. As far as I could tell, this was the only collaboration between a team and card company this year - the Lions and BBM did not issue an "L Collection" set for the first time in several years. I am sure that, once again, various teams issued card sets either through their fan clubs or with meals at the ballpark (or both) but I don't know anything about them.
TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") only did a single one of their "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team sets this year and it was for the Hawks. They did, however, issue a new product called "mini folding screens". Each "mini folding screen" is a panel about 24 centimeters (9 1/2 inches) by 13.5 centimeters (around 5 1/3 inches) which is split into three parts. They issued three sets of eight sheets (four "base set" sheets with four "foil signature" parallels) for three teams - the Giants, Hawks and Dragons.
I think my total count of 2025 NPB sets comes out to about 77 which is a little lower than last year's total of 79 (I had listed the total number of 2024 sets as 60 in my review last year but I was counting all the DreamOrder cards as being one set rather than twenty individual sets). This would be a count of all the "nationally" released sets (so I'm including the Epoch/Eagles team set but no other team issued sets) but not any of the on-line, on-demand Epoch One or Topps Now cards.
There were three KBO sets released in South Korea in 2025 - all by SCC. KBO Collection was released in May, KBO Collection+ came out in August and KBO Sensation was released in September.
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