New Premium Malts set?

Haven't seen this on BBM's website yet, but AmiAmi's had a listing for a couple weeks for a new box set for the annual Premium Malts old timers game. It's a 54 card set with 53 cards for the players and coaches and one insert card of some type. The rosters for this years game include a lot of the same players from last year (including Isao Harimoto, Koji Yamamoto, Osamu Higashio, Randy Bass, and Shinji Sasaoka) plus some new ones like Yutaka Enatsu, Choji Murata, Suguru Egawa, Norihiro Komada and Shigeki Sano.

AmiAmi's got the set priced at 3383 Yen (roughly $40) which I personally think is a little steep for it. Supposedly it'll be out in late September.

Update: BBM still doesn't have anything up on the set, but Discount Niki does. The insert cards are apparently possibly either jersey or autographed cards. Looks like they have the release day as September 30.

Card Of The Week September 19

In keeping with the recent Tokyo Big 6 theme...

Deanna recently had a picture up on her website of herself with the Keio University manager, Shozo Etoh (it's a long post and the picture is near the end). According to Deanna, Etoh is the only current Tokyo Big 6 manager who played in the NPB, having played for the Giants in the late 60's (during the V9 years) and the Dragons in the 70's. He's also the younger brother of the late Hall Of Famer Shinichi Etoh - in fact, they were teammates on the 1969 Dragons.

Here's Shozo Etoh's card from the 2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary set (#42):

2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version

I love AmiAmi. I paid for this set last Friday and the post office attempted to deliver it on Monday. I wasn't able to drop by the post office and pick it up until today. So five days from paying for it to in my hands. Not bad at all.

Anyway, on the the set. The 2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version set is a 37 card box set containing 30 "regular" cards for players from the six universities (five per team), 6 team cards and one insert card.

The cards look pretty much similar to the other Tokyo Big 6 sets - full bleed photos with name, position and team name all at the bottom of the card. Deanna commented the other day that she wasn't real impressed with the photography in the set, but I don't see a marked drop off in the photo quality from the other sets, with the possible exception of this card of Kenya Okabe (#19):


That may be one of the most unflattering pictures I've ever seen on a baseball card. It looks like he's got a pillow under his jersey.

(I do agree with Deanna that her pictures are better.)

Here's a couple other cards from the set. I think this card of Kanji Kawai (#29) is pretty amazing - the ball looks like it's just sitting on the bat. And (according to Deanna) the guy coming up behind Daisuke Takeuchi (#01) is Koji FukutaniHitoshi Fuchigami - I wonder if this shot is from Takeuchi's nohitter last spring. The other cards are Fumiya Araki (#15) and the Toyko team card (#36):





There's a 10 card insert set - you get one card from it in the box. I find the theme of the insert set kind of odd - it's something like "Spring Player Awards" but nine of the ten cards are the Best 9 winners from the spring and the other is Kazuki Mishima, the Spring ERA leader. And I only know that because that's the one I got (#SP10):


Nine of the ten players in the insert set appear in the regular set - the only one who doesn't is Takayuki Matsuo of Keio (who hasn't been in a Big 6 set since the first Spring one in 2008).

UPDATE - Deanna's got a post up about the set now too. It is really cool that she's got the Kawai picture from the opposite side. I'm trying to figure out who took the BBM picture - probably the guy on the left.

Card Of The Week September 12

In honor of the start of the Tokyo Big 6 Autumn season yesterday, here's the team card for last spring's champion Keio from the Spring Version of the BBM Tokyo Big 6 set (#12):


BBM's Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version set hit the stores last week. My set is somewhere between Japan and here right now, so hopefully I'll have a post about it later this week. Although keep an eye out here in case she scoops me again...

BBM Timeline 2003

OK, I've gotten waaay behind in these. I'll try to wrap it up before the post season starts, but I make no guarantees...


BBM's first set for 2003 was the Sluggers set - the "Historic Edition" set for the year. It established the pattern that would be followed by future "Historic Edition" sets - a 144 card base set broken down into 72 cards for OB players and 72 cards for current players. The set also featured a small, 12 card sepia parallel issue, a couple insert sets (12 card "Super Slugger", 3 card "Great Slugger" and 5 card "Slugger Bonus") and a couple bat and signature cards.


The big change for 2003 was the replacement of the Preview set with the Rookie Edition set. BBM apparently decided to expand the small, draft pick section of the previous Preview sets into a full blown draft picks set. This set contained 152 cards - 90 cards featuring players chosen in the previous fall's draft; 60 cards featuring active players (showing pictures from their rookie season) and 2 checklist cards. The set also featured a 36 card facsimile signed parallel set.

Once again, BBM issued 1st and 2nd Version sets in lieu of a single regular set. The 1st Version set featured 432 cards along with the Best 9, Golden Glove and Sluggers insert sets. The 2nd Version set had 407 cards along with Opening Game and Record Achievement insert sets. Both sets also featured facsimile autographed parallels and windbreaker memorabilia cards. In addition to the regular boxes of packs, BBM also issued boxes of "Light Packs" - six cards to a pack. These packs featured a Kira parallel issue and MVP insert sets.

Speaking of pack size - up to and including the 2003 1st Version set, BBM had always issued cards for the regular sets in packs of 10 cards. For the 2nd Version set this year, however, BBM would reduce the number of cards in a pack to 9. It would further reduce the number to 8 in 2004 where it has remained to the present.

"Touch The Game" returned for a second season with a 144 card set. It also featured two parallel issues, an All Star insert set and a bunch of memorabilia cards featuring bat, base, windbreaker and undershirt cards.

The annual All Star set was issued as a 68 card box set with the possibility of pulling autograph cards of Tuffy Rhodes or Makoto Imaoka.

Once again, BBM increased the number of teams that it issued pack based team sets for. Sets were issued for 8 teams: the Tigers, Lions, Giants, Hawks, Fighters, BayStars, Buffaloes, and Marines. All the sets were between 99 and 126 cards and also included various insert sets and autographed/memorabilia cards.

BBM also issued a set for the Giants that was a giveaway at a September Giants game. It featured 20 cards using the same design as the 2nd Version set, but with different pictures.


Boxed sets were again issued for both the pennant winning teams (the Tigers and Hawks). In a bit of twist, though, there were actually two boxed sets issued for the Tigers - the "Victory Road Prologue" set followed a month or so later by the "Victory Road Championship" set. All the sets featured possible autograph cards and the Tigers "Championship" set and the Hawks sets featured possible bat or jersey cards. The annual Nippon Series set was a 60 card box set that had possible parallel issues of the Toshiya Sugiuchi Series MVP card.


For the second time, BBM issued a set for the Japanese National Team - in this case it was the team that played in the 2003 Asian Games, which was a qualifier for the 2004 Olympics. The 36 card boxed set featured possible jersey cards for Daisuke Matsuzaka, Shigeo Nagashima, Koji Uehara and Tsuyoshi Wada.

The final 2003 BBM issue was a 30 card box set featuring six cards each of 5 "Young Hawks" - Tsuyoshi Wada, Hayato Terahara, Nagisa Arakaki, Toshiya Sugiuchi, and Munenori Kawasaki. Each box set featured either a jersey, autographed or "special" card for one of the players.

(As always, Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist And Price Guide" was invaluable in putting this information together.)

From top to bottom, that's the 1st and 2nd Version boxes, a Rookie Edition wrapper, the box for the Tigers "Victory Road Prologue" set and the box for the National Team set.

Card Of The Week September 5

In honor of labor day, here's a card of the current head chairman of the board of the Japanese Professional Baseball Players Association (JPBPA), Chunichi Dragons infielder Hirokazu Ibata (from the 2003 Chunichi Sports Dragons set):

2010 BBM All Star set

Got this year's edition of BBM's annual All Star set in the mail today. It's a 67 card box set featuring 58 cards of the players on the All Star teams (29 for each league), six cards for the managers and coaches, 2 cards featuring the MVPs of the two 2010 All Star games (Shinnosuke Abe and Yasuyuki Katoaka) and one card for the number 1 vote getter (Kenta Maeda).

I give the set a hearty "meh". The cards themselves look kind of like last years - there's a big red (Central League) or purple (Pacific League) border that's thicker on the bottom (and non-existent on the top). There's big "Fan Selected" and "1st Time All Star" decorations for the appropriate players. There's some sort of weird shadow added behind the silhouette of the player - kind of like some of the Team Best minor league cards from the late 90's. I'd say the cards are slightly less busy than last year's but still kind of ugly for my tastes. Here's Hitoshi Tamura's card (#A60) as an example:


BBM made a big deal about how the pictures for this year's set would actually be taken during the All Star games - which is why the set wasn't released until late August unlike earlier editions which usually came out in mid July (and why the MVP cards are for this year's MVPs and not last year's). Well, I'll tell you - you'd be hard-pressed to tell that these pictures came from an All Star game. On most of the cards, you can only see the player who's card it is. For example, none of the cards showing batters batting show the catcher. I only found two cards where you could tell the photo was from an All Star game - Chang-Yong Lim (#A13) where you can see a Hanshin Tiger (Craig Brazell?) playing first in the background and Junji Ogawa (#A03) where you can see him fist bumping players from the Dragons and Giants:



The cards of Tatsunori Hara, Masataka Nashida and Marty Brown show them wearing league jerseys rather than their team jerseys - not worn during the games but in the workout and home run hitting contests maybe? Here's Marty Brown's card (#A34):


One other gripe I have is that about half the cards of the pitchers show a shot taken from in front of them while they were pitching, so you can see second base behind them. It's not a bad shot, but it's overused in the set. Here's Kazuki Yoshimi's card as an example (#A11):


The MVP and Number 1 Vote Getter cards can possibly be memorabilia cards with pieces of baseballs embedded in them. I only got the non-ball versions. Here's Kataoka's MVP card (#A67) and Maeda's Number 1 Vote Getter card (#A65):



There are also gold embossed parallel issues of the "Fan Selected" players available - numbered to 150. I don't know if every box has either a ball card or a gold parallel card. I do know that I got the parallel card for Norichika Aoki.

As I said last year - I used to really like the All Star sets, but I've been less and less enamored of them as time goes by. This is the 20th edition of the set - it might be a good round number for me to stop buying them at.

I do want to point out that I bought the set through AmiAmi. It took about a week for me to get the set after paying for it. It was on the steep side cost-wise: the set itself was only 1995 yen, but EMS shipping was 1500 yen. The total was about $42. (I'm ordering the 2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Fall Version set from them also and I'll be paying about the same again - next time I don't preorder so I don't have to pay shipping twice!). I know Bill Ellis had reported some problems trying to order through AmiAmi - I didn't have any issues. I will say that sometimes their website isn't very responsive, but that wasn't the problem Bill said he had. All I can suggest is that they fixed whatever was wrong when he tried to order.