Autumn Offerings

I've been needing to write a round up of recently announce sets for a few weeks now but I kept either being to busy to write it or wanted to write something else first.  I was thinking that it was fine as the first of the sets I needed to write about wasn't going to be released until...uh...today.  So let me get caught up...

- That set that's being released today is another "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set from TIC (aka "Hits" or "Produce 216").  This one is for the Giants and has thirty possible cards for ten different players.  To be clear, I mean that each of ten players has three possible cards - a "normal" card, a "special" foil signed card and a "secret" card that's "hologram processed" and serially numbered (although I don't know what the print run is for them).

- Epoch has announced a couple of their ultra high-end annual sets.  The "Pacific League Premier Edition" set will be released on October 24th.  Boxes of six cards (three "regular" cards, two "special insert" cards (no "GEM" cards) and either an insert card or a "GEM" "special insert" card) will retail for 17,600 yen (around $112).  The base set has 54 cards - nine per team - and a 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" insert set - the insert cards are serially numbered and there's both "hologram" and "black" parallel versions of them available.  The "special insert" cards are "GEM" (18 cards,  with "black" parallel versions), "Authentic Autograph" (54 cards with parallel versions), "HOLOSPECTRA Autograph" (54 cards), "Uniform Autograph" (18 cards), "Uniform" (18 cards), "Uniform Patch" (18 cards) and "Uniform Letter" (18 cards).  All of the "special insert" cards are serially numbered.

On Halloween, a week after the "Pacific League Premier Edition", Epoch is releasing the "NPB Luxury Collection" set.  Six card boxes for this set will retail for 23,760 yen or around $150.  The base set is just 36 cards - three per team - and all the cards are serially numbered.  There are also parallel versions of the base cards although the details are not on the website.  There's a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set, a 12 card "GEM" special insert card set, and two varieties of autographed cards - "authentic" and "baseball".  There's at least 84 of the former and 48 of the latter.  As you might guess, there's more autographed cards available than there are players in the base set.  Apparently the base set cards only include players who participated in the All Star and/or Fresh All Star games while the autographed cards include both current players as well as retired ones.

- Epoch is also releasing two more of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team sets.  The Tigers set will be out on November 14th while the Dragons set will be out a week later on the 21st.  Boxes for each set will retail for 18,600 yen (about $118) with the Tigers boxes containing four cards while the Dragons ones only have three.  All the cards in both sets - base, insert and "special insert" - are serially numbered.  The Tigers set has a base set of at least 44 cards, three six card "Decomori Signature" insert sets ("Gold", "Green" and "Hologram"), a six card "GEM" special insert set, a six card "BLACK GEM" special insert set and six different varieties of autographed cards - "Authentic" (42+ cards), "Star" (8 cards), "Legendary" (19+ cards), "Remember 2005" (12+ cards), "Combo" (1 card) and "Baseball" (6 cards),  The Dragons base set contains 47 cards and there are four insert sets - the three previously mentioned "Decomori Signature" ones along with a 12 card "Force Of The Dragon" one.  The set also includes the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" special insert sets like the Tigers set does but they are both 12 card instead of six.  There are nine varieties of autographed cards - "Authentic" (30 cards), "Authentic Parallel" (16 cards), "Baseball Greats" (22 cards), "Remember 2007" (3 cards), "Remember 2011" (4 cards), "Combo" (2 cards), "Combo Memory" (2 cards), "Legend Combo" (1 card) and "Baseball" (13 cards).  The Dragons set also has memorabilia cards (the set is officially called "Dragons Stars & Legends With Memorabilia") - there are five varieties of bat cards - "core", "grip", "barrel", "knob" and "combo".  There are five different of all of these except the "combo" one - there's just two of them.

- BBM will be releasing their annual "season-in-review" set, "Fusion", in late November.  As usual, will be a kitchen-sink Franken-set that's basically got four independent parts - a 99 card combination active-OB player subset that recaps the year; 25 "1st Version Update" cards featuring players who did not make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version sets for whatever reason; 20 "Monthly MVP" cards and an unspecified number of short-printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "1st Version Update" cards will include players who returned from MLB in mid-season like Shinnosuke Ogasawara as well as late signing foreign players like Jerar Encarnacion.  There's also the usual insert sets - the 24 "Great Records" cards which highlight milestones reached by two active players from each team; the 12 "Legendary Player" cards which feature one OB player from each team and the serially numbered premium inserts of "Treasure" (12 cards), "Esperanza" (24 cards) and "Superstars" (24 cards).  There are also autographed cards available for both the active and OB players. 

- I'm late getting to this but SCC issued their third KBO set back in August.  The set is called "KBO+" and I think it has a base set of 120 cards (12 cards per team).  There's also 50 "Record" cards, 50 "Hologram" cards, 50 "Victory Charm" cards (which will have transparent portions) and 30 autographed cards.