More Cards From Kenny

When I emailed Kenny (Zippy Zappy) a few weeks ago to thank him for the cards he'd sent me, he replied with a promise that another envelope would soon be on its way to me.  That envelope arrived today and it contained five collectible card game cards that covered a 21 year time period.

Three of the cards were Konami issues and, as always, I made my best guess as to which of the bewildering number of Konami sets these are from:

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old SP #B05S009

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Edition #B09S046

2012 Konami Baseball Heroes Vol. 2 #C12RS027

The next card was a Bushiroad DreamOrder card from 2024 of then-Lions and now-Astros pitcher Tatsuya Imai:

2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Pacific League Booster Pack Vol. 1 #PBP01-L01

To be fair, there's a bewildering number of separate DreamOrder sets as well.  I just find them a little easier to figure out which set any particular card comes from.

The last card was from the new Bandai Fan Stars set.  Specifically, this card is from the Fan Stars set that was distributed with packs of "Kakinotane" - this is the third consecutive year that Bandai has done a set given away with bags of the bar snack - the first two years were the "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection" cards that featured caricatures of players.

2026 Bandai Fan Stars Kakinotane #BBK01-15

I have to say that I find the Bandai card pretty attractive for a CCG card,  I find most of the card designs way too busy for my tastes.  But this set seems to have kept the game-related stuff on the front of the card from dominating it.

This not only is my first Fan Stars card but it's my first 2026 card!

As aways, thank you for the cards, Kenny!  I need to go back to Japan just so I can buy you a beer or dinner or both for all your generosity!

Card Of The Week April 26

Last Tuesday was Shugo Maki of the Baystars' 28th birthday and he celebrated the same way he had two other times in his career - he hit a home run.  Maki also homered on his birthday in both 2022 and 2024.  Maki's rookie season was 2021 so he's hit home runs on half of his birthdays that he's spent in NPB.  And, to be fair, the Baystars were off on his birthday in 2025 so he's really done three of five possible times.  Given that he appears to have only been doing it in even numbered years, I'd expect him to do it again in 2028.

Here's a card of Maki from the 2021 BBM Baystars set (#DB71):

H/T NPB Reddit

They Said It Couldn't Be Done

OK, to be honest, "they" in this case is "me".  "It" is redeeming an "exchange card" for an autograph that was pulled from a box of Japanese baseball cards from overseas.

My assumption was always that you couldn't do it from outside of Japan.  To be honest, though, now that I'm thinking back on it, I'm not sure why I made that assumption.  But I've known of a couple people in the US who've pulled exchange cards from busting boxes of BBM cards and my advice to them was always to find someone in Japan who was willing to handle getting the card redeemed for them.

My assumption, however, was apparently not correct.  There was a post on Reddit a few weeks ago from a user from the UK with the handle Carlbertosilva who had recently visited Japan and took in an open-sen (pre-season) game at Tokyo Dome.  He'd picked up a box of 2026 BBM Rookie Edition and pulled a card that could be redeemed for a shikishi (basically a somewhat large cardboard square featuring the player's autograph - Kenny sent me one a few years back) for Hiroki Tsuneya, the first pick of the Fighters in the ikusei portion of last fall's NPB draft.  

Since he didn't know that it was impossible to redeem the card from overseas, he decided to go ahead and try it.  He was rewarded a few weeks later with a package in the mail from BBM containing the shikishi.  He shared photos of the exchange card, the note from BBM and the shikishi on Reddit and I've swiped those images to show here:

The text on the exchange card basically outlines what it is the card is good for and where to send it (via registered mail) to redeem it (along with a bunch of legalese about how you don't get the card back and that BBM isn't responsible if your exchange card gets lost on its way to them or if your shikishi gets damaged in transit).

The note (which I assume came with the shikishi but maybe I should be careful in making any assumptions) basically says "congratulations on winning an autograph", "thanks for buying BBM cards" and "like we said, you don't get the exchange card back".

So there you have it - exchange cards from BBM boxes at least can be redeemed from outside of Japan.  I don't know if that extends to the other card makers or not but, as Carlbertosilva shows, it can't hurt to try.

Thanks to Carlbertosilva for sharing his story and giving me permission to re-share it here.

Cards From Kenny

On Saturday, I received another envelope that Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) was kind enough to send me from Japan.  As I always say, I'm not sure why Kenny has decided to be so generous to me but I'm happy and grateful that he has.  

This latest envelope contained three cards.  The first two were two more of the Calbee "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" cards like he had previous sent me.   Both of these cards were from the set that came out at the end of January (as opposed to the beginning of last December):

2025 Calbee Pro Yakyu Spirits A #PS-49 (Trey Cabbage)

2025 Calbee Pro Yakyu Spirits A #PS-68 (Kota Tatsu)

The final card was from last year's Topps NPB set and is of Nikita Moiseev, the second pick of the Swallows in the 2024 draft.  Moiseev is kind of an interesting story.  My first thought when I saw this card was that, like Louis Okoye and other players with Western names, one of his parents must have been Japanese.  That's not the case, though, Moiseev's parents are both Russians living in Aichi prefecture.  I don't think he's a Japanese citizen, but because he attended a Japanese high school, he was subject to the NPB draft.  

2025 Topps NPB #197

Moiseev made his ichi-gun debut on Friday, the day before I got his card.

Thanks again for the cards, Kenny!

Card Of The Week April 19

I trying to decide on a topic for this week's "Card Of The Week" and I noticed that Chusei Mannami had hit his league-leading eighth home run today.  Mannami always seems to have good looking cards so I did a quick search on Jambalaya to pick out a good one (and one that I've hopefully not shared before).  While doing so, I discovered something kind of interesting - his cards in the 2024 Topps NPB and Epoch NPB sets used the same photo:

2024 Topps NPB #106

2024 Epoch NPB #331

While I would like to use this as an opportunity to slam Topps, their set was out first.  The 2024 edition of their set was released in late May of that year while the Epoch set didn't come out for another month or so.

I've seen a couple instances of this in the past but I don't know how often it happens.  While I'm curious, I can't think of a what to figure it out that doesn't involve a brute force approach to looking at the cards of 500-ish players for each year and I'm not sure I'm curious enough to do it.

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.

Card Of The Week April 12

I wanted to highlight two things that happened this past week in NPB.  I decide to use Epoch One cards for both events.

On Tuesday, pitcher Hiroto Saiki struck out 16 Swallows, tying the Central League record for most strikeouts in a game.  Curiously, Saiki did it in eight innings before being replaced by a relief pitcher, denying him the chance to set a new record or, potentially, tying the overall NPB record of 19 which was set by Koji Noda in 1995 and tied by Roki Sasaki during his perfect game in 2022.  Here's a card of Saiki from 2023 when he threw a complete game, three hit shutout against the Marines (although he "only" struck out 12 in the game):

2023 Epoch One #393

On Wednesday, the Dragons beat the Baystars 6-4 in extra innings with Akira Neo getting the win in relief.  It was the first victory for Neo at the ichi-gun level.  Neo was originally drafted as a position player by Chunichi in the first round of the 2018 draft.  After struggling at the plate for much of his first three seasons, he converted to pitching in 2022 - he had been a two way player in his high school days with Osaka Toin.  To be fair, I'm not sure his pitching has been much of an improvement over his hitting but it is notable that he finally notched a win.  Here are two cards for him - one is from when he was drafted in 2018 and the other was from his first appearance on the mound for the top team - it was in Hiroshima on May 21st, 2022:

2018 Epoch One #675

2022 Epoch One #299