Monday, March 18, 2024

2023 BBM Team Sets

I'm going to wrap up my posts about the cards I got from Ryan last month in the traditional manner:  writing about BBM's team sets.  A large fraction of all the cards he sent me were the twelve "comprehensive" team sets from last season.  A "comprehensive" team set is one that has all the players on the team's 70 man roster at the time it was printed (which is usually less than 70 players).  BBM issued these sets between April and July of last year.

Each set had a base set of 81 cards which included 62 to 69 "regular" cards featuring the players on the 70 man roster along with the team's manager.  Each set also had a single card dedicated to its mascot or mascots and then the remainder of the set was made up of three to five subsets containing one to six cards.  Some of the mascot cards double as a checklist for the set.  Here's the break down for each set:

Team Player/Manager Cards Mascot Cards Subsets
Chiba Lotte Marines 68 1 Spark (4), Hot Topic (5), Gifted (3)
Chunichi Dragons 65 1 Top Prospects (3), Over The Top (6), Pride & Passion (6)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 68 1 Newcomer (4), Dominators (4), Go For It (4)
Hanshin Tigers 69 1 Newcomer (4), All My Heart (3), Smash & Crash (4)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp 68 1 Geneology of Uniform Numbers (3), Special Delivery (4), Now Or Never (5)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 67 1 Top Prospects (3), Polar Star (4), Batter Up (6)
Orix Buffaloes 66 1 Fireballers (4), Inner Steel (3), Horn Attack (4), Buffaloes Mountains (1), Love Chara (2)
Saitama Seibu Lions 67 1 Born In 99 (5), Smash Hit (4), Uplift (4)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 68 1 New Dimension (3), Tohoku Roots (4), Daybreak (3), Landmark (2)
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 67 1 Flagship (4), Take Over (2), Accelerator (3), Stay Tuned (4)
Yokohama DeNA Baystars 67 1 Mighty Lefty (3), Spring Fever (6), Lock On (2), Enhance (2)
Yomiuri Giants 62 1 Giant Potential (6), Strings Of Giants (6), Changes Of Giants (6)

There's a total of 802 individual "regular" cards in all of these sets - 790 players and 12 managers.  As you might guess, there's a lot of players who show up in the team sets who did not appear in BBM's flagship sets - 1st Version, 2nd Version or Fusion.  This includes foreigners like Freddy Galvis, Kyle Keller, Drew Anderson, Robert Corniel, John Gant, Conner Menez, Jacob Nix, Chris Gittens, Nienting Wu and Tyler Austin along with somewhat big named players who maybe in a rough stretch or past their prime like Yasunobu Okugawa, Seiji Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Nakajima, Naomichi Donoue, Shota Dohbayashi, T-Okada, Yusuke Nomura, and Kazuki Tanaka.  Here's a card of a player from each set who was not in any of BBM's flagship sets:

2023 BBM Marines #M51

2023 BBM Dragons #D46

2023 BBM Hawks #H56

2023 BBM Tigers #T07

2023 BBM Carp #C36

2023 BBM Fighters #F10

2023 BBM Buffaloes #B54

2023 BBM Lions #L19

2023 BBM Eagles #E64

2023 BBM Swallows #S08

2023 BBM Baystars #DB40

2023 BBM Giants #G27


Sunday, March 17, 2024

Card Of The Week March 17

Topps has had an NPB license for three years now* and has issued nine sets over that period of time.  Seven of those sets have had an associated insert set featuring current NPB players on cards using an old Topps design.  The 2021 NPB and NPB Chrome sets had inserts that used the 1986 design. (with identical cards between the two sets although the Chrome ones had the "chrome" finish) while the 2022 editions of those sets had inserts that used the 1958 design.  The 2023 NPB set had an insert set that used a white bordered version of the 2001 design and that year's Bowman NPB set included a 1989 Bowman style insert.  Unlike the previous two years, the 2023 NPB Chrome set was not simply an ugly parallel of the NPB set but completely different set using the same format (albeit with an ugly "chrome" finish).  The difference carried over to the 2001-style insert set as it not only had different photos than those used in the NPB set but the borders of the cards were the original green.  (And just to be complete, the two Japanese Topps offering that did not have "retro" inserts were the 2022 Bowman NPB and 2023 NPB 206 sets.)

*To be completely accurate, it's been two years and five months

I have the complete "1986" set from the 2021 set but only a handful of cards from the other sets.  Well, to be accurate, I have a handful of cards from the other sets OTHER than the 2021 & 2022 Chrome sets since I didn't see any reason to pick up ugly parallels.  I realized the other day that I have cards of one particular player in all of these sets.  It was completely unintentional although I'm not sorry about it.  To be honest, I don't know if there are any other players who have cards in all five (ok, SEVEN) sets.  Anyway, here's the cards of this particular player from each set:

2021 Topps NPB #86-MMU

2022 Topps NPB #58-19

2023 Topps NPB #01-14

2023 Bowman NPB #89B-14

2023 Topps NPB Chrome #01-14


Friday, March 15, 2024

2010 SCM Rookie Edition Cards

Sports Card Magazine (SCM) #79 was published in January of 2010.  It contained ten baseball cards that used the design for the 2010 BBM Rookie Edition set but they weren't promo cards for the set.  They were essentially "bonus" cards for the set and were numbered 115 to 124 so they were just after the 114 cards of the set.

I've been trying to get all ten of these cards for a number of years now and the last four or five that I needed were in the box Ryan sent me recently.  It's taken me about that long to finally realize that these ten cards are the first half of a two-part celebration on SCM's part of the 20th anniversary of BBM making baseball cards.  Let me show the cards first and then I'll explain:

SCM #134/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #115

SCM #135/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #116

SCM #136/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #117

SCM #137/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #118

SCM #138/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #119

SCM #139/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #120

SCM #140/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #121

SCM #141/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #122

SCM #142/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #123

SCM #143/2010 BBM Rookie Edition #124

It wasn't obvious until I had seen all the cards but each card features a rookie from each year from 2001 to 2010.  The following issue of SCM - #80, published in March, 2010 - included another ten cards.  Each card reused the photo of a rookie card from 1991 to 2000 but used the 2010 BBM 1st Version design.  

It's been a long week so I may not be clear in explaining this.  SCM #79 has 2010 BBM Rookie Edition-style cards of one rookie from each season from 2001 to 2010.  SCM #80 has 2010 BBM 1st Version-style cards of one rookie from each season from 1991 to 2000.  In other words, over the two issues of the magazine, BBM issued cards of a rookie from each year that they had published baseball cards.  I don't have either of the issues in question but I'm pretty sure this was to celebrate BBM's 20th Anniversary doing cards.

Sports Card Magazine did two more batches of cards in 2010 to continue the 20th Anniversary celebration.  Issue #81 in May contained cards of five 2010 rookies using the 1991 BBM format while issue #83 in September had three double-sided "Great Central" photo variant cards from the BBM 20th Anniversary set.

I feel I should mention that the Yusei Kikuchi card above is almost identical to his card in the 2010 Rookie Edition set.  The differences are the card number (the original card is #067), the background color of the photo on the front (the original is blue) and the photo on the back of the card (the original has a photo of the Lions' entire draft class while this card repeats the front photo). 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Random Cards From Ryan

It's been just over a month now since I got my latest "big box o'cards" from my friend Ryan in Japan and I'm finally getting close to the end of the posts I wanted to do about what he sent me.  I thought I'd do a relatively quick post tonight on some random cards that he sent me.

First up are a couple rookie cards from BBM team sets - the first player was better known as an outfielder but his rookie card still reflects that he was drafted as a pitcher:

2004 BBM Fighters #F16

2007 BBM Giants #G071

Speaking of BBM teams sets, I decided last year that I wanted to complete the sets from the 00's that I had opened boxes for.  There were eleven of these in all - 2003-05 Giants, 2004, 2006-07 Tigers, 2004 Baystars, 2005 Dragons, 2006 Buffaloes and 2006-07 Swallows.  Ryan found a bunch of the cards I needed from several of the sets, including all the cards I needed for the 2006 Buffaloes and Giants sets.  I'm not going to show all the cards he got me from these sets (it was probably around 100 total) but here's a representative sample:

2006 BBM Tigers #052

2007 BBM Tigers #T051

2007 BBM Tigers #T096

2006 BBM Buffaloes #Bs31

2006 BBM Swallows #TY07

2006 BBM Swallows #TY96

2004 BBM Baystars #YB34

2003 BBM Giants #019

2004 BBM Giants #G49

2004 BBM Giants #G99

2005 BBM Giants #G014

I got a partial set of the 2019 BBM Brilliant Dragons set the first time I got Zippy Zapped and I've been slowly attempting to find the three cards that Kenny didn't include.  I found an auction last year for the Joely Rodriguez card - the final one I needed to complete the set and Ryan picked it up for me:

2019 BBM Brilliant Dragons #11

Another set I decided to try to complete was the 1999 BBM Mr Giants set which was a biographical set for Shigeo Nagashima.  Ryan only found a couple of cards from this set for me but one of them was probably the most valuable - there's a subset featuring the Giant's top draft pick every year that Nagashima managed the team which means there's a card of Hideki Matsui:

1999 BBM Mr Giants #G91


I hadn't gotten the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards from the 2021 BBM Fusion set when I originally got the set and I finally decided to go after them a few months ago.  Ryan found six of them so I'm down to only needing three now:

2021 BBM Fusion #FP31

I've been somewhat ambivalently attempting to complete the "Rising Stars" subset from the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set for a few years now and Ryan picked me up several more cards from it.  I'm down to only needing one card from the set now so I guess I really am going to try to complete it (but I still don't like the set that much):

2000 Upper Deck Ovation "Rising Stars" #10

Speaking of sets I don't like that much...I ended up asking Ryan to pick up this "1989" insert card for Takeya Nakamura from the 2023 Bowman NPB set.  This is completely because I like Nakamura and not because I like the Bowman set:

2023 Bowman NPB #89B-5

I've mentioned that big lot of Lions cards I had asked Ryan to pick up - there was a rookie card of Hiroyuki Nakajima from the 2001 Broccoli set lurking in it:

2001 Broccoli #065

I came across a printed autograph card of Yutaka Enatsu from the 2010 BBM Premium Malts set for a low price on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and asked Ryan to pick it up:

2010 BBM Premium Malts #MP1

Finally if you've been paying attention to other posts I'm done with round ups of random cards from the boxes Ryan has sent me, you should be expecting these next items - Epoch NPB promo cards!  Ryan sent me one for the 2022 set but he sent me 20 for the 2023 set:

2022 Epoch NPB Promo #155

2023 Epoch NPB Promo #166


Once again, I want to thank Ryan for gathering all these cards up and sending them to me.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

2023 BBM Farewell Set (the Expurgated Version)

Starting in 2011, BBM has issued an annual box set each winter featuring the baseball players who retired the previous season.  For the first few years the set might include multiple cards for a player, especially if that player had played for more than one team during his career.  For example, Kazuo Fukumori had three cards in the inaugural 2011 set showing him with the Baystars, the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Eagles.  After a few years, however, BBM reduced the number of cards to only one per player and used photos of the player from their final NPB team, regardless of whether they had spent most of their career with another team.  I think the most egregious example of this was the 2021 set showing Hisashi Iwakuma as a member of the Yomiuri Giants, the last time he "played for" in Japan if you consider two innings pitched on the farm team having "played for" the team.

Despite these changes, I still made it a point to pick up this set every year - or more accurately ask Ryan to pick it up for me (although I did buy the first three sets myself on my first trip to Japan 11 years ago this week).  But three years ago, BBM made a change to the set that made me lose interest - they added retiring athletes from other sports to the set.  I've mentioned many times that I'm really a one trick pony any more when it comes to sports - I don't really pay any attention to anything other than baseball.  I made the decision in 2022 to not get this set anymore and I've skipped it the past two years as well.

So I was kind of surprised to discover a partial 2023 set in the box of cards that Ryan sent me.  What he did was send me just the baseball players from the set - 26 cards out of the original 39 in the base set.  I don't know what became of the other 13 cards but I don't really have to care about them.  Of course, this does bother my OCD some knowing this isn't really a complete set but I'm trying to ignore that.

For the cards themselves, they're pretty much what we've come to expect from this set.  There's a combination of photos from the player's retirement ceremonies where they're either waving goodbye to the fans or being tossed in the air by their teammates and generic "pitcher pitching, batters batting" photos of the players while they were still active.  The photo on the card is from the last year the player was active in NPB - for example Kazuhisa Makita spent the 2022 season in Taiwan playing for the CTBC Brothers so his photo is from the 2021 season when he pitched for the Eagles.  The big names in the set are probably Kosuke Fukudome, Yoshio Itoi, Chihiro Kaneko, Tomotaka Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Utsumi.  Here's some sample cards:

#01

#03

#08

#23

#02

You can see all the cards (including the non-baseball ones) over at Jambalaya.