I wanted to do a quick post on recent set announcements. There haven't been a lot and I'm a little worried that I haven't heard about when Calbee's Series Two will be released. Last year it came out in August but I've yet to see anything about it this year.
- I should mention that the Topps Finest set that was released in the US earlier this month included a 35 card "World's Finest" insert set that features players from this year's World Baseball Classic. The set includes four players from Samurai Japan - Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami and Seiya Suzuki - along with one player from Korea - Lee Jung-hoo. It's a bit disappointing that there aren't any players from either team who aren't on MLB rosters. I took a quick look on Ebay to look at what the cards are selling for and the base versions aren't outrageously expensive. The parallels are another matter, of course.
- Epoch has announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets. The Lions set will be released on August 8th while the Tigers set will be out on the 22nd of that month. The base set for the Lions will have 40 cards (39 for active players and one for an OB player - Orestes Destrade) while that of the Tigers will have 45 cards (40 for active players and five for OB players). All the base cards in both sets will have a "hologram" parallel available. Both sets have the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have - three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each). The Lions set has an additional three card insert set dedicated to Takumi Kuriyama. I think all the inserts are serially numbered. There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited. The Lions set has seven different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (39 cards), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (6), "Legendary" (1 - I assume it's Destrade), "Takumi Kuriyama" (3 - I think these are autographed version of the insert cards), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Combo" (3). The Tigers set only has five different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (38), "Star" (7), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (5) and "Combo" (3). I have no idea who the two active players that are in the base set but didn't sign "Authentic" autographs. This brings the count of teams that Epoch has done "Premier Edition" sets for to eight. The only teams they're missing are the Marines, Hawks, Eagles and Giants.
- Speaking of the Giants, Epoch has announced the first of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets for this year and it's for them. The set has the somewhat unwieldy name of Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia and three card boxes of it will retail for 16,500 yen (roughly $100). The base set will contain at least 55 cards - 22 active players and at least 33 OB players. There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5. There's also a six card "Unbreakable Spirit" insert set. The memorabilia cards referred to by the set title are bat cards for eight active players and batting glove cards (and a batting glove and bat combo card) for one player (Yuta Izuguchi). The set also includes several different types of autographed cards. All the autographed cards are for OB players because the Giants do not allow authentic autographed cards for any of their active players. The set will be in stores on October 3rd.
- BBM issues a multi-sport set each fall since 2016. This set is usually called "Infinity" except in years that end in either "6" or "1". Since this year is 2026, the set is not "Infinity" but "Masterpiece" instead. The funky naming pattern is because BBM celebrates the founding of their parent company - BBM Magazine Sha - in 1946 so this year is their 80th Anniversity (with 2021 having been their 75th and 2016 being their 70th). To be fair, I've never really noticed much of a difference between the sets called "Infinity" and the ones called "Masterpiece". BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set but, as usual, it looks like most of them are for baseball players. The list only includes OB players - and OB players who are actually retired as opposed to active in MLB OB players. Some of the players are Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto and one foreign player - Warren Cromartie. Other sports represented in the set include softball, soccer, rugby, basketball, volleyball, tennis, table tennis, badminton, pickleball, bowling, gymnastics, diving, sumo, judo and pro wrestling. The set will be released in late October.
1 comment:
I was just taking a look on Calbee's home page about Series 2 and there is not a word about it, even though we're at the All Star break already.
Just looking back through my blog posts over the years it seems I used to post about Series 2 being released in early July every year back when they were doing 3 series, though I think they have released them later since they cut back to doing just 2 series. Also the release date of series 1 this year was quite a bit later than usual too.
I'm really ready to quit with new Calbees and just concentrate on collecting their older sets. Everything about them just keeps getting worse and worse year after year.
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