2026 Topps Chrome Samurai Japan set

I feel like there's been a dearth of World Baseball Classic cards from Topps this year so I was intrigued when I heard that Topps was going to release a Samurai Japan set.  The initial promo information on it didn't have a checklist, it just showed several sample cards which included a Shohei Ohtani base card, a "Sensational Samurai" insert card depicting Ichiro with cherry blossoms and Mt Fuji, a "Samurai Spirit" insert card for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a "Neon Nights" insert card showing Munetaka Murakami in front of the Kabuki-chō Ichiban-gai neon sign in Shinjuku and an autographed card of Roki Sasaki.  From the players displayed, I wondered if the set was just going to feature players from the Japanese World Baseball Classic teams that have played in MLB.  Which, of course, made me wonder what the list of players from Japanese WBC teams that have played in MLB was.  I checked the rosters and came up with a list of 37 players.

I had a bit of an "a-ha!" moment when more details came out about the set.  The base set has 74 cards BUT there's only 37 players in it - each player has two cards in the set.  "I was right!" I thought to myself, "The set contains cards of all the MLB players who've played for all six of the Japanese WBC teams."

And then I looked at the checklist and was somewhat surprised to discover I was wrong.  The 37 player thing was a coincidence.  While there were a couple retired players from the 2006 and 2009 teams (specifically Ichiro and Munenori Kawasaki), the bulk of the players were from the 2023 and 2026 teams (along with Sadaharu Oh, the manager of the 2006 team).  What surprised me even more is that only 16 of the 37 players in the set ever played in MLB.  I decided to do a breakdown of the checklist and figure out which WBC teams got represented.

Before I show that, however, let me give a little more details about the set.  In addition to the 74 card base set, there are six short printed cards that are numbered from 75SP to 80SP.  Two of these are for Ohtani with the others being for Ichiro, Oh, Yamamoto and Sasaki.  There are four insert sets - "Generation Greats" (5 cards) and the afore mentioned "Neon Nights" (10 cards), "Samurai Spirit" (5 cards) and "Sensational Samurai" (10 cards) sets.  I've included the latter three sets in the checklist breakdown below but I left off the "Generation Greats" because each card features a pair of players.  The pairings are Ohtani & Oh; Ichiro & Seiya Suzuki; Yamamoto & Yu Darvish; Hiromi Itoh & Sasaki; and Murakami & Kazuma Okamoto.

In addition, there are 13 autographed cards and one autographed "Generation Greats" card - the one with Ohtani and Oh.  That card is apparently a 1/1 and will, obviously, command quite a price.  (As someone said on the Japanese Baseball Card Discord group, that's "a house in a card.  Possibly a very nice house.")

Here's the list of players in the checklist along with which WBCs they played in and whether they ever played in MLB.  I think it's odd that there was no representation from the 2013 team at all despite there being five MLB players on that roster including Kazuo Matsui, Kenta Maeda and Masahiro Tanaka.

#s	Player	WBCs	MLB?	Short Print	Autograph	Neon Nights	Samurai Spirit	Sensational Samurai
1, 38	Sadaharu Oh	2006		79SP	x
2, 39	Munenori Kawasaki	2006, 2009	x		x		x
3, 40	Ichiro	2006, 2009	x	76SP	x		x	x
4, 41	Yu Darvish	2009, 2023	x		x		x	x
5, 42	Kodai Senga	2017	x		x
6, 43	Seiya Suzuki	2017, 2026	x					x
7, 44	Roki Sasaki	2023	x	78S	x	x		x
8, 45	Shohei Ohtani	2023, 2026	x	75SP, 80SP	x	x	x	x
9, 46	Yoshinobu Yamamoto	2023, 2026	x	77SP	x	x	x	x
10, 47	Shota Imanaga	2023	x		x
11, 48	Masataka Yoshida	2023, 2026	x		x
12, 49	Chihiro Sumida	2026
13, 50	Hiromi Itoh	2023, 2026				x		x
14, 51	Yusei Kikuchi	2026	x
15, 52	Koki Kitayama	2026
16, 53	Tomoyuki Sugano	2017, 2026	x
17, 54	Ryuhei Sotani	2026
18, 55	Taisei	2023, 2026
19, 56	Shoma Fujihira	2026
20, 57	Hiroto Takahashi	2023, 2026				x
21, 58	Atsuki Taneichi	2026
22, 59	Yuki Matsui	2017, 2023	x		x
23, 60	Yuki Matsumoto	2026
24, 61	Hiroya Miyagi	2023, 2026
25, 62	Seishiro Sakamoto	2026
26, 63	Yuhei Nakamura	2023, 2026
27, 64	Kenya Wakatsuki	2026
28, 65	Kazuma Okamoto	2023, 2026	x		x	x		x
29, 66	Sosuke Genda	2023, 2026
30, 67	Kaito Kozono	2026
31, 68	Teruaki Sato	2026				x
32, 69	Shugo Maki	2023, 2026				x
33, 70	Taisei Makihara	2023, 2026
34, 71	Munetaka Murakami	2023, 2026	x		x	x		x
35, 72	Kensuke Kondoh	2023, 2026				x		x
36, 73	Ukyo Shuto	2023, 2026
37, 74	Shota Morishita	2026

Oh, I haven't bothered to list them but there's a metric sh*t ton of parallels of almost every card available because of course there are.  It IS a Topps set, after all.

The set is due to be released on October 16th.  The cards will only be available on Topps' website and will be sold in either a single, 7 card pack (each pack contains six base set cards plus one non-base set card) or a four pack "Collectors Box".  The MSRP for a pack is $40 and for the Collectors Box is $180 although they are selling on Ebay for much more than that - $450-ish.

I was tempted by this set but the combination of the price and the fact that it's a "Topps Chrome" set (I find Chrome to be extremely ugly although I realize I'm in the minority on this) has pretty much killed any thoughts of picking it up.

More New Items

I know it's only been a little over two weeks since the last time I did a round up of the latest set announcements but a there's been a couple more since then, one of which has kind of a short fuse, so I thought I should do another quick one.

- The short fuse item is that Calbee has finally announced that this year's Series Two will be released in late August.  Unfortunately, the set is pretty much the same size as every Calbee set from the past few years.  There's a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards (5 per team), 12 "Hope" cards (featuring a young prospect from each of the 12 teams) and 6 checklist cards (featuring photos of team mascots).  There are three insert sets - the usual 24 card "Star" set, a single "Legend" for Hirokazu Sawamura's retirement at the end of last season (there were four similar "Legend" cards in Series One) and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" set.  There are parallel versions of all the inserts.  Calbee has put the checklist of the set on line here.

- I keep forgetting that Bushiroad is still putting out their DreamOrder collectible card games this year.  The next release is called "Play Re:Style" and is due out on September 19th.  I'm not sure but I think there's 180 base cards (84 common, 48 rare, 36 "super rare" and 12 "zone rare") plus 30 Tactics cards (1 rare and 29 common) and the usual plethora of parallels.  I'm somewhat curious how much longer Bushiroad is going to keep publishing these as I kind of feel like they've been eclipsed by the Bandai FanStars cards.

- BBM will be releasing their annual "Rookie Edition Premium" set in late October.  Each box set will contain 38 cards - the complete 36 card base set plus two "premium insert cards".  The "premium insert cards" are all either autographed or memorabilia cards.  Since each box will most likely contain at least one autograph card, they aren't cheap.  The MSRP for a single box is 18,700 yen which is around $118.  The base set features three 2025 draft picks/2026 rookies from each team.  They won't necessarily be the top three draft picks but rather the three "best" (according to BBM) rookies for each team.

- Epoch has announced another of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" monicker.  This one is for the Hawks and will be released on October 10th.  The set will be sold in four card boxes that will retail for 18,700 yen (~$118).  The base set isn't quite set yet but will contain at least 75 cards including 37 cards for active 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 are six different types of autograph cards available - "Authentic" (75+ cards), "Star" (8 cards), "Rookie" (4 cards), "Breakthrough" (8 types), "Remember 1999" (15+ cards) and "Remember 2011" (13+ cards).

Summer To Fall Releases

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.

Summer Offerings

As usual, I feel like I blinked and a month passed since the last time I did a round up of the recently announced sets.  So let's get to the new batch of announcements...

- I'm somewhat astonished but Topps is actually releasing a second 2026 NPB set while the baseball season is still happening.  Hell, the release date for this year's edition of the Stadium Club NPB set is July 10th, so it'll hit the stores before the All Star break.  Considering that the 2024 edition didn't come out until December of that year and last year's wasn't until September, this is a major development for them.  Like their flagship set, the details for the set are a little sparse but again, I'm assuming it's a 216 card set.  There are at least "Beam Team" insert cards and I assume there are a couple other insert sets but, again, they're not listed.  There will be relic cards for active NPB players and autographed cards for both active and retired NPB players as well as active Japanese MLB players.  The big new gimmick that Topps has added for this set is image variations for 24 players (which I assume means two per team).  I mock Topps' NPB sets quite a bit but I have to admit that Stadium Club NPB is pretty good (at least the 2024 edition was).

- BBM's annual cheerleader/dance squad set - "Dancing Heroine" - will be released in mid August.  The set will be around 180 cards.  As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Giants, Tigers, Swallows, Dragons, Hawks, Fighters, Marines, Eagles and Lions and, as usual, I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set.  There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available.  

- Genesis, BBM's annual high-end set will be released in late September.  As has been standard for the entire run of the set (since 2012), the base set will contain 120 cards - ten per team which splits up as nine player cards and a team checklist.  No one really cares about the base set though as the attraction of Genesis is the autograph and memorabilia cards available in the boxes.  The different varieties are too numerous to list but there are booklets, super patches, ball autographs and multiplayer autographed memorabilia cards.  There's also a myriad of parallel versions of all the base cards and six "High-grade insert card" sets - Elite Of Nine, Game Changer, Unrivaled, Cross Forest, Combo Cross Foil Signing and Treasure.  

- The latest "Premier Edition" team set from Epoch is for the Dragons and will be released on July 11th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 42 for active players, one for Doala, the mascot and two for coaches Takuya Asao and Nobumasa Fukuda (using photos from when they were players) - and there is, of course, a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has 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).  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.  There are seven different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (43), "Star" (3), "Rookie" (9), "Legendary" (2) and three types of multiple player autographed cards -  "Combo" (1), "Dragons Combo" (4) and "Rookie Combo" (5).  I don't know what the difference between "Combo" and "Dragons Combo" is.  

- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on July 25th.  This year's edition will have 38 cards - a 35 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card.  The base set is made up of all of last fall's draftees from the six Pacific League teams (regular phase of the draft only - there are no development players included).  There are three types of autographed cards available of all 35 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.

- I missed that SCC had issued their 2026 KBO Collection set on the 20th of last month, just three weeks before their Festa set that I erroneously said was the first KBO set for 2026.  The base set (or at least the "normal" portion of it) will contain 290 cards which will include 10 cards for retired players.  The other 280 cards feature two cards for 14 players on each of the ten KBO teams - one showing the player in their home uniform and one showing them in their away uniform.  There are 112 "Alphabet" cards which each feature a player superimposed on a letter that spells the team's name.  There's two versions for each letter for each team, one showing a pitcher and one showing a batter.  So for the LG Twins, there's two cards with a player superimposed over a letter "T", two cards with a letter "W", etc.  Obviously each team has a different number of these cards although each team has at least 10 (I'm guessing they did the full name of the "KT Wiz") and the SSG Landers having 14.  There are 80 "Hologam" cards - 7 for each team plus the 10 retired players - and each "Hologram" has a parallel version available.  There are 30 "Victory Charm" cards - three from each team.  These appear to be some sort of partially transparent card.  I think there's 77 autographed cards available - 67 for active players (with either six or seven per team) and one for each of the OB players.

Topps, Team Sets, Game Cards, 2nd Version and a KBO set

Time for another round up of recently announced NPB sets...

- Topps is back for their sixth year of doing NPB sets.  I'm not exactly sure of the details of this year's edition of their flagship set though - TradingCardJournal.com says the set will be released on June 12 but Topps' Japanese website says it'll be May 29th.  Neither listing says how big the set will be but I'm assuming it'll be the usual 216 cards (18 cards per team).  There will be insert cards but it beats the hell out of me what they'll be because Topps didn't bother including that information either - other than they're going to have one that uses the 1991 design.  There'll be the usual myriad of parallels but again there are no details other than they'll exist and some of them will be serially numbered.  There will be autographed cards of active NPB players, "active players currently playing in MLB" which I assume means active former NPB players (I don't expect to see Aaron Judge cards) and retired players (which have been some of Topps' more interesting inclusions).  The big news is that Topps will include relic cards for active players with this set for the first time.

- While I'm on the subject of Topps, I should mention that there are some World Baseball Classic inserts available in the recently released Bowman set but they're pretty rare and expensive.  The 25 card "Anime" insert set features anime-style cartoon images of a number of active and retired players including Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Paul Skenes and Bobby Witt, Jr. in their WBC uniforms.  One of the retired players in the set is Sadaharu Oh which is pretty cool and the active MLB players include Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto and Tatsuya Imai.  There's a kanji variation of the "Anime" inserts as well that's only for the Japanese players (Ohtani, Oh, Murakami, Okamoto, Imai along with Hideo Nomo and Shotaro Morii, a farmhand in the Sacramento Athletics organization).  

- BBM has announced the final three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026.  As usual, 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 (or may have title that doesn't translate to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Inserts	Other
Early July	Buffaloes	69	Reborn(2), Samurai Soul(2), Heirloom Sword(2), Small But Amazing(2), Natural(4)	Go All Together(9), Beyond The Dream That Must Come True(3), Golden Egg(3), Three Pillars(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph cards
Mid July	Marines	68	Rising Young Players(4), Veteran Players(2), Specialists(3), Early Season Highlights(4)	Key Players(9), Promising Players(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late July	Dragons	69	Young Starting Pitchers(3), Infield Key Players(3), Tokai Heroes(6)	Unstoppable(9), No Limit(3), Rise Above(3), Shine Bright(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

- BBM has also announced that this year's edition of 2nd Version, the second part of their flagship set, will be released in late August.   The base set follows the pattern of almost all 2nd Version sets since 2015 - 216 player cards (18 for each team), 12 team checklists, 36 "1st Version Update" cards (three for each team), 36 "Cross Forest" cards (three for each team, numbered in continuation of the same subset in 1st Version) and a currently unspecified number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are likely short-printed again, so the base set without them will be 300 cards.  There's six different insert sets - "The Beginning", "My Generation (Year Of The Rat)", "Hero's Theme", "Combined", "Treasure" and "Foil Picturesque".  All of these have 12 cards except for "Treasure" which has 36.  There's the usual plethora of parallels of the player cards along with the "Secret", "Ultra Secret", and "Super Ultra Secret" photo variations.  There will also be memorabilia cards and autographed cards - including autographed cards using the designs from BBM's team sets along with "buyback" autographs.

- Epoch has announced another "Premier Edition" team set.  This one is for the Fighters and will hit the stores on July 18th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 37 for active players and eight for OB players.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has 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).  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.  There are five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" 37), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (8) and "Combo"6).  

- Bandai is issuing updates to their "Professional Baseball FanStars" collectible card game.  The Vol. 2 Booster Packs for both the Central League and Pacific League will be released on May 30th.  Both sets will have 96 cards - 36 "Normal", 30 "Rare", 18 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare".  In addition, Bandai will issue a set called "EX Booster Pack Vol.1" on August 1 but there's not really any more information about it than that.  

- And finally, the first KBO set for 2026 has been announced by SCC.  It's called "Festa Set" and will be released on June 6th.  As is kind of standard for KBO sets, it's a bit confusing but I think the base set is 80 cards (eight per team) with all the base cards being labeled "Sporty".  There are also 80 "Treasure" cards but I'm not sure if these should be considered inserts or parallels or just 80 more base set cards.  There are 49 autographed cards available which works out to five per team except for SSG which one has four.

Team Sets Galore!

I feel like I blink and a month has passed since the last time I did a round up of new set announcements.  There's been a bunch of new announcements since then, most of which are team sets.  One of them is already in stores but most of the rest won't be out until June.

- The set that's already in stores is a 30 card Tigers team set from Bandai.  This set is being sold in packs of two cards that include two vanilla cream wafers so Jambalaya has referred to this as the "Twin Wafers" set.  It looks like there's a 20 card base set featuring various Tigers players along with card for the team's mascots along with a 10 card subset with card numbers that start with "R" (for rare maybe?).  The "R" cards feature additional card of nine players who are in the base set (Teruaki Sato, Koji Chikamoto, Shota Morishita, etc) plus a card of manager Kyuji Fujikawa.  The cards are only available in Kansai.  (I should mention that the first series of Bandai's other NPB cards for 2026 - the collectible card game Fan Stars - came out a few weeks ago and are pretty attractive for CCG cards).

- Speaking of Collectible Card Games (ok, maybe not the smoothest transition), Bushiroad is apparently still pumping out their DreamOrder cards.  There'll be a booster pack set called "Zone Impact" (or possibly "Impact Zone") released on June 6th.  I think there are 180 "regular" player cards - 84 "common", 48 "rare", 36 "super rate" and 12 "zone rare" along with 30 "Tactics" cards - 29 "common" and 1 "rare".  There's also the usual bewildering batch of parallels.

- Epoch has announced that the 2026 edition of their flagship "NPB" set will be out on June 27th.  After the size of the base set shrunk in each of the last two years, it was nice to see that it'll be 240 cards again this year (still way too big of a drop from the 432 cards the set was from 2018 to 2023) which works out to 20 cards per team.  There is a "retail version" of the set as well has an additional 12 "rookie variation" cards listed under the "regular card" section of the add.  There's some other differences between the "standard" and "retail" versions.  While both sets have parallel versions of all 240 base cards, the "standard" version also has two 12 card insert sets - "NPB Stars" and "Walk-Off Win" while the "retail" version only has parallel versions of the 12 "rookie variation" cards.  Both sets have 178 different autographed cards available but the "standard" version also offers 12 of Epoch's ubiquitous "GEM" premium insert cards.  I do not know if the "retail version" is exclusive to FamilyMart as it was two years ago.

- Epoch has announced two more of their 2026 "Premier Edition" team sets.  The Baystars set will be out on June 6th and the Buffaloes will be out a week later on the 13th.  As usual, the sets are very similar except for the size of the base set.  The Baystars set has 49 cards in its base set (including 10 cards for OB players) while the Buffaloes set has just 41 base set cards (although only two of them are OB players so both sets feature 39 active players).  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  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).  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.  Both sets have five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (40 for DeNA, 39 for Orix), "Star" (5 and 6 respectively), "Rookie" (6 for the Baystars and 10 for the Buffaloes), "Legendary" (10 for DeNA and 2 for Orix) and "Combo"(8 and 4).  

- Lastly, BBM has announced four more of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026, bringing the total number announced for this year to nine.  As usual, 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 (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Inserts	Other
Late May	Hawks	65	Inheritance(6), Fight! Kyushu(3), Next Cannon(2), Speed Baller(5)	Easygoing and Self-Reliant(9), Craftsman(3), Young Gun(3), Next Wave(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(18)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Mid June	Baystars	68	Veteran Sluggers(3), Leading Candidates(3), Master-Disciple Duo(3), Early Highlights(3)	Main Players(9), No. 1 Draft Picks(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(18)	Autograph cards
Mid June	Fighters	69	Re: Evolution(2), Middle Infield(1), Slugging Catcher(3), Hokkaido Association(5), No-hitter(1)	Dominate(9), Three Arrows(3), Next Up(3), Momentum(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late June	Tigers	68	Promising Young Players(3), Memories Of Jersey Numbers(3), Solid Contribution(3), World Tigers(3)	Glory To Tigers!(9), Mighty Relievers(3), Contenders(3), Gush Out(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

I don't know why the Baystars cards don't add up to 81.

The last three teams that BBM hasn't announced yet are the Marines, Dragons and Buffaloes.

Calbee And More Team Sets

It's only been two weeks since the last time I did a round up of new set announcements but I figured that it'd be a good time to do another one.  Maybe writing this post will make me feel better about South Korea getting eliminated by the Dominican Republic...

- Calbee's Series One set will officially be released on April 27th but it'll likely start appearing in card shops both in person and on line a few days before that.  The checklist for the set is online already and it unfortunately confirms that Calbee's continuing to produce sets that are smaller than they were just a few years ago.  There are 89 cards in the base set, split between 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 23 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  The theme of the checklist cards is mascots which is distressing for two reasons - in previous years the checklist cards featured some of the best photography in Calbee's sets and Calbee did mascots as the theme of their checklist cards last year too.  The fact that there's six checklist cards implies that there will again be only two Calbee "flagship" sets this year with Series Two coming out sometime in the summer - Calbee's intent every year is to include twelve checklist cards across all of their Series - one checklist card featuring each NPB team (although not a list of the cards for that particular team).  There are the usual 24 "Star" insert cards as well as four "Legend" cards featuring players who retired last year - Yuito Mori, Sho Nakata, Hisayoshi Chono and Shingo Kawabata.  There are gold facsimile signature parallels of both the "Star" and "Legend" cards.  There are also 12 "Team Home Run King" cards listed but I'm not sure if these will be available in packs or as some sort of "special box".  Calbee used to have 12 card box sets that were associated with each Series and sold through some on line retailer (most recently Amazon.co.jp) but the equivalent cards from last year's sets were available in packs. 

- BBM has announced two more of their "comprehensive" team sets.  As usual, 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 (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Admirar	Other
Late May	Carp	63	2025 Topics(4),  Promising New Forces(4), Born In Setouchi(5)	Paramount(9), Tough Enough(3), Carp Nova(3), Promising Future(3)	20	9	6	Autograph cards
Late May	Giants	63	Mascot Gathering(1), Promising Young Players(5), Strongest Unit(2), Three Arrows(3), Grand Slam Trio(3), Reliable Veterans(4)	Giants Pride 2026(15), Rookies(3)	24	9	6	Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex 2026 (3), My Fave (12), Super Metallic Giants (9) plus memorabilia cards

Remember that the Giants don't allow their players to have authentic autographed cards.

- Epoch announced the second of their 2026 "Premier Edition" team sets - this one is for the Swallows.  The base set will 40 cards - 38 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Ikeyama) plus OB cards for Norichika Aoki and Shingo Kawabata.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that 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).  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.  Finally, there are five different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (37 different), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (7), "Legendary" (2) and some undetermined as yet number of "Combo" autographs.  The set will hit the shelves on April 25th.

2026 Epoch One Samurai Japan Cards

I had an email exchange with Ryan today and he alerted me to the fact that Epoch had issued some Epoch One cards for Samurai Japan.  There are 21 cards in all and they cover some of the exhibition games that the team played in February.  

As you'd probably expect, there are no MLB members of the team included but there are cards for Kensuke Kondoh, Teruaki Sato (2 cards), Shota Morishita (2 cards), Seishiro Sakamoto (2 cards), Kenya Wakatsuki, Hiromi Itoh, Hiroya Miyagi (2 cards), Chihiro Sumida, Hiroto Takahashi, Shugo Maki, Kaito Kozono, Koki Kitayama, and Shoma Fujihira with Sato, Morishita, Sakamoto and Miyagi having two cards each.  There are also cards for players who played in the exhibition games but are not part of the WBC roster - Hibiki Shinohara, Tai Sasaski and Daito Yamamoto (who also had two cards).

The cards are 500 yen each and will be available for three days - which will be roughly 6 PM JST on Monday, March 9th (5 AM EDT).  As always it does not appear that Epoch will ship these cards overseas.

Almost Spring

After several weeks of frigid temperatures and yet another snowfall last weekend, we're finally seeing signs of spring here in the mid-Atlantic part of the US.  It's a beautiful day in the mid-50's and almost all of the snow has melted, making me feel like that spring might finally be on the way.  With that in mind, I figured it'd be a good time to go over the sets that have been announced over the last month or so.

- BBM issues box set in March of each year with a different theme under the "Icons" label.  This year's edition is called "Icons - Nomination" and, as has been the standard for a while, will contain 37 cards - the 36 card base set plus one "special" card.  I think the theme is "top draft picks" so the card base set will feature three players for each team who were (or are - the first round picks from the 2025 draft for eight teams are in the set) top draft picks.  The "special" card could be one of a number of possibilities - a "foil printed" card, an "Extreme2026" insert card (one of the eight 2026 rookies), an "Advance" insert card, a "foil signed" card or an actual autographed card.  There are parallel versions of the "foil printed", "Extreme2026" and "Advance" cards available.  The set will be released on March 30th.

- 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 (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Admirar	Other
Early April	Eagles	71	Newcomer(2), Title Holders(3), Tohoku Spirits(5)	Main Players(9), Growing Up(3), Veterans Of The Counterattack(3), Rookie Phenom(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Mid April	Lions	68	I Am!(4), Advantage Ahead(3), Headliner(3), Legacy of the 1(3)	Shishi Zangetsu(9), Tachyon(3), For A Long Time(3), Anthem(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Late April	Swallows	67	Conversion(2), Fourth Round Picks(3), Iron Wall Relief(4), Promising Young Fielders(5)	Main Players(9), Combination(3), Breakout Candidates(3), Rookies(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards

- Speaking of team sets, Epoch has announced the first of their "Premier Edition" team sets for 2026.  Epoch's team sets are not "comprehensive" (i.e. they don't have every player on the 70 man roster) but this first set for the Carp will have a base set of 49 cards - 47 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Arai) plus OB cards for Seiya Suzuki and Koji Yamamoto.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that 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).  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.  Finally, there are seven different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (45 different), "Star" (5), "Carp Combo" (2), "Combo" (1), "Rookie" (9), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Legendary" (1).  I have no idea what the difference between "Carp Combo" and "Combo" is.  The set will be released on May 2nd.

- Epoch has again teamed up with the OB Club to produce another OB Samurai Japan box set.  This year's edition is "officially" dubbed the "Japan Professional Baseball OB Club Official Card Japan National Baseball Team Holographica 2025" set and will be out on March 28th.  Some of the set details are still in flux but the base set will contain at least 32 cards for retired players (and managers) of Samurai Japan.  Each box will contain the full box set plus two "special" cards - a "hologram" parallel card (which may have parallel versions as well) and one of three different types of autographed cards - "Authentic", "Tribute To The Past" and "Baseball".  From the name of the set, I assume that it was originally intended to be released in 2025 but got delayed (as was also the case for the other two sets that Epoch collaborates with the OB Club on - Career Achievement and Holographica).  I'm kind of amused that last year's OB Samurai Japan set was under the "Career Achievement" label but this year's is under the "Holographica" one.  I gave into temptation with last year's set and was disappointed with it.  Given that this year's set appears to have many of the same players, I don't think it will be hard for me to give it a pass.

2026 Epoch One Cards

Today is February 1st which means that all the NPB teams opened their training camps today (although since it's already the 2nd in Japan, technically they did it yesterday).  For the third year in a row, Epoch is commemorating the event by releasing the first batch of their on demand Epoch One cards.  There are 71 2026 cards now available, the bulk of which (61 cards) are for the 2025 draft picks for the ten teams that Epoch issues these cards for - the Marines, Dragons, Hawks, Tigers, Fighters, Lions, Eagles, Swallows, Baystars and Giants or everyone other than the Carp and Buffaloes.  For everyone except the Tigers, it's just the draftees from the "regular" phase of the draft but the Tigers players include the two players they took in the ikusei portion.  These will be the first cards for many of these players, beating out their BBM Rookie Edition cards by several weeks.  And no, there's no card for Rintaro Sasaki, the first round pick of the Hawks as he has not signed with the team.

The remaining ten cards are for players who changed teams over the winter.  This includes Kenta Maeda, who returned to NPB after ten years in the US and signed with the Eagles as well as Hikaru Itoh (joined the Eagles), Toshiki Abe (Dragons), Go Matsumoto (Giants), Takahiro Norimoto (Giants), Hiroya Shimamoto (Fighters), Haruki Nishikawa (Fighters), Kohei Arihara (Fighters), Hiyu Motoyama (Tigers) and Torai Fushimi (Tigers).

This is the ninth year that Epoch has issued their Epoch One cards and I'm kind of amazed that everything about them has remained the same.  They're still just 500 yen apiece (including domestic shipping) and are only available for three days.  What's also apparently remained the same, unfortunately, is that there's no way to order these directly from overseas.

Spring Is Coming...Isn't It?

My part of the world got dumped on with a bunch of snow and ice on Sunday and the temperatures have dropped into the Arctic range so I want to focus on some recent announcements for card sets that will be coming out when the weather will hopefully be a bit warmer.

- I had made a prediction in my wrap up of Epoch's 2025 card sets that last year's edition of the Holographica set, one of their annual collaborations with the OB Club, was going to be delayed until March of 2026.  I was correct - the set will be released on March 14th.  This is another of Epoch's "ultra high end sets" with each six card box retailing for 16,500 yen (about $107).   Each box is guaranteed to include two autographed cards.  I don't think the full checklist has been settled on yet but there are at least 59 cards in the base set, each with a parallel version, and something like four different varieties of autographed cards.  Players in the set include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Yamamoto and Tsutomu Wakamatsu.

- BBM is issuing a box set dedicated to Munetaka Murakami called "Kiseki".  Each box will contain 37 cards which will include the 36 card base set plus one "special" insert card which could be a parallel card, one of ten different memorabilia cards or one of five different autographed cards.  The set will be out in mid-March.

- Jumping ahead a few months, BBM is releasing the 2026 edition of their 1st Version set in early May.  The details for the set look pretty much the same as it's been for every year since 2015.  There's the usual 324 player/manager cards (27 for each team), the 12 team checklist cards and the 36 "Cross Something" cards that will be continued in the 2nd Version set later in the year - this year the Something is "Forest".  That makes a total of 372 cards in the base set.  Nine cards for each team have several different facsimile autograph parallels.  There are also parallel versions for 71 of the rookie cards (or all the rookie cards).  There are three varieties of short printed photo variants - each team has a card with a rare "secret" version, a card with a rarer "ultra secret" version and a card with an even rarer "super ultra secret" version (and they could all possibly be variants for the same player).  There are two non-premium insert sets - "New Wonder" (12 cards - one rookie per team) and "Japonism" (12 cards - one per team) - and four serially numbered premium insert sets - "Amazing" (12 /50 cards - one per team), "Promising" (12 /50 cards - one per team) "Cross Foil Signing" (6 cards - all members of the Giants) and "3D Cross Forest" (12 cards - one per team as you probably guessed).  Some of the insert sets will probably have parallel versions but I don't see anything about them yet.  There are both autograph and memorabilia cards available, including cards with multiple autographs and cards with memorabilia from multiple players.  There will also be "buyback" autographs available.

- Bandai is returning to the NPB Collectible Card Game market for the first time since their final Owners League set back in 2015.  The new game is called "Professional Baseball Fan Stars" and appears to be a mobile game.   Bandai will be releasing two sets of cards in late March - a Central League Vol.1 set and a Pacific League Vol.1 set - in boxes containing ten packs containing seven cards each.  Both sets will have 120 cards - 48 "Normal", 36 "Rare", 24 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare" (which will break down to 4 "Normal", 3 "Rare", 2 "Star Rare" and 1 "Super Star Rare" for each team).  I'm assuming there will be additional "volumes" released as the year goes on.  I don't know if this means that Bushiroad will not be continuing the "DreamOrder" cards but I kind of think it does - there are no new releases mentioned on their website.

- Bandai, of course, collaborated with Namco the past two years to produce the very fun "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection" sets which were distributed with bags of kaki no tane, a snack food.  The two are teaming up again this year to release more of the Collectible Card Game "Fan Stars" cards.  There will be 36 cards in the set - 12 "Normal", 12 "Rare" and 12 "Star Rare".  There are parallel versions of the "Star Rare" cards available.  The set will be released in April.

More 2026 Releases

There's been a couple new set announcement recently, with one of the sets actually being scheduled for release next week, so I figured it was time to do a quick round up of them.

- Calbee is releasing yet another "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" set next week on January 27th.  "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" is a mobile game and this will be the third set that Calbee's done as a tie-in.  This looks like it's a follow-on to the set Calbee released at the beginning of December as the card numbers in the new set are starting where that set ended (and now that I look more carefully at the card from that set that Kenny sent me, I see it says "Series 1" on it).  This new set will have 49 cards - 24 "2025 Prospi Selection", 24 "2025 Anniversary Players" and one "secret" card.  I think the "2025 Prospi Selection" cards (which I assume is something from the game) have kira parallels available while the "2025 Anniversary Players" cards have kira and/or facsimile signature parallels.  Not counting the "secret" card, there are four cards per team.  There's some big names in the set including Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Hayato Sakamoto and Teruaki Sato.  It somewhat surprisingly includes Munetaka Murakami who I would have thought couldn't be a on an NPB card set for active players but clearly the licensing details aren't what I thought they were.  The checklist is kind of surprisingly heavy on foreign players with ten total including Raidel Martinez and Livan Moinelo.  What's a bit odd is at least three of those foreign players are, like Murakami, no longer the property of the teams they are listed with.  Tayron Guerrero is no longer a Chiba Lotte Marine and Tyler Austin and Trevor Bauer are no longer Yokokama DeNA Baystars.  I believe that this is the first time Bauer has appeared on a card in any of the major Japanese card manufacturers and I suspect it will be the last, at least as an active player.

- The Eagles annual team issued set has been issued by Epoch the past few years and I'm starting to wonder if it should still be considered a "team issued" set.  When the 2025 edition of this set was announced, I assumed it was the 1st Version set with a 2nd Version set to be released later in the year.  That turned out to not be the case so I won't make that mistake with this year's edition which will be released on February 11th.  The base set will contain 77 cards of active players, including development players.  I believe that the 2025 draft picks/2026 rookie class are included.  There are silver and gold facsimile signature parallels of each of these cards.  There are three insert sets - "Key Performances", "Mound Star" and "My Routine" and autographed cards of all the players with the exception of any development players who were not 2025 draft picks (if that makes sense).  There are also Rui Muneyama uniform cards along with the somewhat ubiquitous "GEM" premium insert cards in both "White" and "Black" varieties. 

- TIC (aka "Hits" or "Produce 216") is issuing their first "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set since their Hawks set last year and, not surprisingly, it's again for the Hawks.  Once again, there's 32 oversized cards available - 16 "normal" and 16 "special with foil autograph".  There's 16 players listed so everyone has a "normal" and a "special" card.  There are real autographs available as well.  This year's edition will be released on March 28th.

2026 Is Almost Here

Every year around now I suddenly realize that there's only a handful of days left before the new year.  Part of what causes this epiphany is when the first card sets of the new year get announced.  There've been three announcements for 2026 sets so far so let's get to them.

- Actually this first announcement isn't "technically" a 2026 set.  While Epoch's "Career Achievement" set won't be released until January 31st, this is the 2025 edition of their annual ultra high end collaboration with the OB Club.  It seems like this set (and the "Holographica" one, of which the 2025 edition has not been announced yet) gets delayed into the year following it's "cover date" each year.  Each box of this year's edition will contain six cards (including two autographed cards) and retail for 18,150 yen (about $116).  The base set contains 60 cards and each card has a serially numbered "hologram" parallel.  There are four varieties of autograph cards - "Authentic" (56 cards, off hand don't know who the four players in the base set that don't have autographs are), "Tribute To The Past" (20 cards), "Baseball Greats" (12 cards) and "Baseball Autographs" (22 cards).  Everyone in the set are OB players and include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Akiyama and Kazuo Matsui.

- "Rookie Edition", BBM's annual draft pick set, is back for its 24th edition.  There's no real changes from the past few years.  The base set contains 126 cards - 114 cards for the 2024 draft picks and twelve "New Face" subset cards - because 126 is already divisible by three, there was no need for BBM to add one or two "list of draft picks" cards.  The draft picks include both the 73 players taken in the regular phase and the 43 players taken in the ikusei (development player) phase.  The twelve first round picks will again have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variations and all the regular phase draftees will have various foil signature parallels.  There are three types of insert cards - "Starting Point" (12 cards), "Close Relationship" (nine cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (this is listed as being nine cards but I suspect it's actually only two cards featuring the 2025 Rookies Of The Year Misho Nishikawa and Kota Shoji).  There are autographed cards available for the draftees although I believe they are only available as exchange cards.  The set will be released in late-February.

- BBM's annual set for retiring players will also be out in late February.  Once again the set will not only include baseball players but retiring athletes in other sports including wrestling, swimming, soccer and boxing.  BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set this year but it will be sold as a box set with n+1 cards where n is the base set size.  The extra card will be a "special" insert card that will feature an autograph of one of the retiring players - either foil or authentic.  Some of the baseball players in the set will be Hisayoshi Chono, Sho Nataka and Shingo Kawabata.  

A Couple Surprises

I was away for work last week when I learned about a couple new items that I hadn't been expecting so here's a quick post to get us all up-to-date...

- Steve, a trading partner from years gone by, sent me an email last week to let me know that Topps had issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan team that played a couple friendlies against Korea a few weeks ago.  There are six cards in all, four from the game on November 15th (Tai Sasaki, Misho Nishikawa, Seishiro Sakamoto and Isami Nomura) and two from November 16th (Yumeto Kanemaru and Kazuma Okamoto).  The cards are each 1485 yen (around $9.50) and will be on sale until December 26th.  It does not appear that Topps will ship these cards to the US.  It would not surprise me a lot if Topps also issued a team set after these cards have sold out.  (I am surprised that Topps is doing Samurai Japan cards since both Epoch and DreamOrder did them earlier this year.)

- Speaking of surprises, Calbee issued a set last week.  This would be the third off season in a row that Calbee has issued a set following the Hawks set in the 2023-24 off season and the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game tie-in set from last year.  The new set is another tie in to the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game but, unlike the set from last January, this set only has 24 cards instead of the 47 that the earlier set had (it was originally planned to be 48 cards but apparently the set was delayed which caused them to have to remove the Roki Sasaki card from the set since he had signed with the Dodgers).  Calbee managed to get this set out before the end of the year which allowed them to not have to pull the Munetaka Murakami from it.  You can see all the cards (including some of the kira parallels) over at Jambalaya - they look very similar to the earlier set, just with a different background.

Ending 2025 On A (Mostly) High (End) Note

It's been a bit since my last round up of the upcoming card releases so I thought I should get caught up.  I suspect that these are the last of the 2025 releases but it wouldn't be the first time I thought the card manufacturers were finished for a year and then found out I was wrong.  All but one of these releases are on the high end of the price scale.

- We'll start with the release that's not super expensive.  BBM is releasing a box set for the Fighters called "Great Voyage" in mid-December.  Each box contains the entire 36 card base set plus one "special insert card".  The base set contains 24 cards of "young" Fighters players including Hiromi Itoh, Kotaro Kiyomiya, Koki Kitayama and Yuya Gunji plus all six of the 2024 draftees/2025 rookie class.  The base set also contains 12 "combination" cards and I'm guessing that all 24 of the players appear on one of those cards but I don't know that for sure.  The "special insert card" could possibly be a foil signed card or (I think) a memorabilia card.  Again, I'm not sure but I think the memorabilia cards are only for the 2024 draftees - one of them is combination card featuring all six players.  I don't think there are any actual autograph cards available.  Unopened boxes will retail for 5500 yen or roughly $36.

- Moving on to the more expensive stuff, BBM will release their "ultra high-end" "Glory" set on November 28th.  Boxes will contain just six cards and retail for 26,400 yen or about $172.  There are 36 cards (three active players from each NPB team) in the base set, each of which has a parallel.  I think the base cards are /2000 but I don't know what the parallels are.  There are two possible inserts - "MIYABI" (six cards, each /50 with an even more limited parallel) and "Glorius 3D" (12 cards, each /25).  The big attraction is, of course, the memorabilia and autographed cards.  The memorabilia cards include "super patch" cards as well as combo and triple ones.

- BBM's "ultra high-end" multi-sport set "Crown" will be released at the end of December.  Like "Glory", this set will be sold in six card boxes that will retail for 26,400 yen.  All the cards in the set are serially numbered but I don't know what any of them are numbered to.  The base set has 48 cards, 18 of which will feature baseball players - 9 OB and 9 active.  There are four insert sets although two of them - "Velvet" and "Jet" - could be considered parallels of the base cards as there are 48 cards in each of those sets.  The "Velvet" cards are "made of brushed material" while the "Jet" cards are "made from jet black special paper".  The other two insert sets are "Foil Autumn" (24 cards on "hologram paper") and "Sparkling" (12 3D cards).  And, of course, there are tons of autographed cards although no memorabilia cards.  Each box is guaranteed to include at least one autographed card.

- Epoch has announced two more of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets.  The "Hawks Stars & Legends" set will be released on November 29th and the "Tigers Stars & Legends" set will be out on December 6th.  Both sets will be sold in boxes of four cards (well, two "mini-boxes" of two cards) for 18,700 yen or about $122.  The Hawks base set will contain 64 cards (41 active players and 23 OB players) while the Tigers set base set will contain 45 cards (25 active player and 20 OB players).  I think all the base cards are serially numbered but, again, I don't know what the counts are.  Both sets have what seems to be the standard "Stars & Legend" set inserts - three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with six "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  The Hawks set will have four different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (64 cards), "Star" (two cards), "Rookie" (six cards) and "Legendary" (20 cards).  The Tigers set also has four different types of autographed cards but they're slightly different - "Authentic" (45 cards), "Star" (21 cards), "Legendary" (18 cards) and "Baseball" (six cards).  The "Baseball" ones are on pieces of actual baseballs.

 - Topps has announced that their fourth NPB set for 2025 will be "Finest".  Boxes containing 15 packs of four cards will retail for 9900 yen (~$65) and will be released on November 14th.  The base set contains 216 cards (as usual) which breaks down to 18 cards per team (as usual).  Those 18 cards will contain cards for the team's manager and top three 2024 draft picks (also as usual).  There are four 24 card insert sets - "The Man", "Finest Fortune", "Creators" and "1993 Baseball's Finest".  According to the checklist for the set, there are a ton of autographed cards available.  Looks like ten players for each team along with a bunch of NPB Legends.  The Legends include a number of current MLB players like Shohei Ohtani, Masataka Yoshida, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Yu Darvish and Shota Imanga along with Ichiro, Norichika Aoki, Sadaharu Oh, Hideo Nomo and Cecil Fielder.  The only memorabilia cards available are all for Ichiro - a "relic", a "Topps Sterling Jumbo Letter Patch Card" and a "Topps Dynasty Autograph Patch Card".

KBO Catchup and End Of The Year Releases

It's only been a little over two weeks since I last did a round up of newly announced releases but Dan Skrezyna - aka Korean Cardboard - contacted me last week to let me know there were a couple new KBO releases.  So I thought I'd get caught up on those as well as cover a couple newly announced NPB sets.

- SCC released "KBO Sensation" at the end of August.  I think this is a higher end set.  I'm a little confused about the details as Dan's post on BlueSky has different information then what he's put up on TCDB.  Of course, it would help if SCC had some useful information on their website but, hey, you can't have everything.  I'm going to assume what's on TCDB is the accurate information.  The base set has 182 cards and there's some sort of parallel but I'm not sure if all the base set cards have parallel versions.  There's six different varieties of insert cards - "Chrome" (50 cards), "Wave" (40 cards), "Impact" (40 cards), "Tropical" (10 cards), "Rookie" (33 cards with a 1-of-1 parallel) and "Rookie Of The Year" (1 card).  There are also jersey cards, patch cards, sticker autograph cards and on-card autograph cards available.  It looks like each box retails for 120,000 won (around $86) and is guaranteed to contain one autograph cards, one memorabilia card (either a jersey or a patch) and one "Chrome" insert card.

- About three weeks after releasing "KBO Sensation", SCC released another KBO set called "KBO Collection Plus".  They put a little more detail on their website and Dan's put the information for the set up at TCDB.  The set has a 115 card base set and there's two associated sets that could be considered either inserts or parallels - 52 "All Star" cards and 50 "Hologram" cards.  The reason I'm a bit confused about what they should be considered is that they use the same card numbers as the base set but they use a completely unrelated design.  Further confusing matters is that the "Hologram" cards have a parallel version too.  50 players also have autographed cards - both facsimile and real ones - that also use the same numbering system as the base set which is really confusing but kind of par for the course for SCC's KBO sets.

- This year's edition of "Rookie Edition Premium", BBM's annual box set for the top rookies of the season, will be released on November 1st.  Each box contains 38 cards - the 36 card base set plus two "premium" insert cards.  The base set contains three cards for each team which aren't necessarily the top three picks from last year's draft.  (I should point out that "rookie" in this case is the baseball card definition - players taken in the 2024 draft - rather than the "eligibility for the Rookie Of The Year award" definition.)  The "premium" insert cards could be autographed cards (either sticker or on-card), memorabilia cards (including patch and bat knob) and "booklets" - although I'm not sure if those have multiple autographs or multiple pieces of memorabilia (or both).  As you might expect because each box has two hits, they're retailing for 16,000 yen or around $108.

- I guess that last year's "Lions Collection" box set featuring the team's alternate uniform that they collaborated with the Japanese fashion line "New Yorker on and also featuring cards of team members wearing street clothes was popular enough that BBM decided to do a similar set this year.  "Lions Bouquet" is a 46 card box set that will be released towards the end of November.  Each box contains the 45 card base set, a "special" insert card and one of 11 tin badges.  The base set is split up into three parts - 16 "Bouquet-style" cards showing players in street clothes, 18 cards showing players in the "Lions Summer Blue" alternate uniforms and 11 "Peko-chan & player illustration" cards.  Peko-chan is the mascot for the Fujiya candy company - it's a girl with pigtails.  I'm not sure but I think these eleven cards are drawings and the tin badge in the box matches one of these cards.  The possible "special" insert cards include foil "facsimile" autographed cards, real autographed cards, and exchange cards for memorabilia cards.

- 2025 is BBM's 35th year doing baseball cards.  It will also feature the 4000th issue of Shukan (Weekly) Baseball, published by Baseball Magazine Sha, BBM's parent company, at some point this fall.  To celebrate both of these events, BBM is releasing a set called something like "35th Anniversary & Weekly Baseball Issue 4000 Commemorative Special Edition" in late December.  The base set will contain 240 cards, split evenly between OB players and active players - although 12 of the active player cards are for rookies and will use the 1991 BBM design.  I'm assuming this set will follow the usual "same number of cards per team" format (although BBM's "25th Anniversary" set from 2015 did not) so there'll be 20 cards per team (with Kintetsu and Rakuten combined probably).  The OB player list is interesting.  Previous BBM anniversary sets were limited to post-1991 players but with Shukan Baseball's archives going back to 1958, it really opens up the number of players available.  Some of the pre-1991 OB players include Sadaharu Oh, Koichi Tabuchi, Keishi Suzuki, Masayuki Kakefu and Suguru Egawa.  The set will have three insert sets - "Cross Ocean" (24 OB players), "Dream Team" (24 active players, I assume it's using the 1998 "Dream Team" insert design like the 30th Anniversary set did) and "Combined" (12 cards with an OB player paired with an active player from the same team).  There are also memorabilia cards, all of which appear to feature multiple players as there are "combo", "triple" and "quartet" ones listed.  And, of course, there are autograph cards for both the OB and active players as well as ones that are listed as "Shukan Baseball Cover Autograph" which I guess is an autographed reproduction of a Shukan Baseball cover shrunk to baseball card size.  I was kind of hoping that the base set cards would be reproductions of Shukan Baseball covers but I'm guessing that it'll only be for these autographed cards.

- Epoch is releasing their second of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets on November 8th (a week after their first one comes out).  Three card boxes of the "Marines Stars & Legends with Memorabilia" set will retail for 16500 (about $112).  The base set has 36 cards - 32 for active players (and manager Masato Yoshii) and just four for OB players (Seiya Inoue, Toshiaki Imae, Masahide Kobayashi and Tomoya Satozaki).  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.  All the memorabilia cards are bat and/or batting glove cards for three 2025 rookies - Misho Nishikawa, Ryusei Miyazaki, and Yu Tatematsu.  There are four varieties of individual bat cards - "core", "grip", "barrel" and "knob" - along with a card featuring a bat fragment for all three players.  There are two varieties of individual batting glove cards - "piece" and "strap" - along with a card featuring a batting glove piece from all three players.  There are also individual cards that feature both a bat and glove relic for each player.  There are also five varieties of autographed cards available.  All 36 players have an "authentic" autograph card while the four OB players also have a "Legendary" autograph card.  I think the remaining autograph cards are all for the active players - "Star" (five cards), "Rookie" (six cards) and "Baseball" (20 cards).  If we assume that there's no overlap between the players in each group, there's an additional autograph for 31 of the 32 active players.  I'd guess that the one guy who doesn't have a second autograph card is Yoshii but I don't know that for sure.