1996 BBM Set

1995 BBM Set Summary

Size:  655 656 cards
Cards Per Team:  42 (team card, manager + 40 players)
Team Card Theme:  Oendan Sections?
Number Of Leader Cards: 31
Checklists: 12 13
Subsets: 95 Record Breakers (9 cards); 10 Best Hitters (10 cards), 10 Best Pitchers (10 cards), Masaaki Saitoh Puzzle (9 cards), Akira Etoh puzzle (9 cards), Nostalgic Special (10 cards - 5 cards each for the retirements of Tatsunori Hara and Akinobu Mayumi) BBM 50th Anniversary(1 card?), Freetime(3 cards?), Combo cards(5 cards?)
Inserts:  Magic Motion
Parallels:  10 Best Hitter and Pitcher subsets have gold print parallel
Notable Rookies:  Masahiro Araki, Yasuhiko Yabuta, Tuffy Rhodes
Late Series:  Chunichi Dragons (cards 614-655 replaced cards 93-114, 330-342, 480-486, 533 and 591) plus Checklist #13 (card 656)

Notes:

This is the BBM set that I have the fewest cards from - probably only around 70 or so.  Because I have so few, I'm making a lot of guesses about the content.

This is the first BBM set to really not have any sort of OB subset.  The closest thing is the "Nostalgic Special" subset that features five cards a piece for the retirements of Tatsunori Hara and Akinobu Mayumi in 1994.

#576

There's also a single card dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Baseball Magazine (BBM).

#277

I'm guessing about the Freetime subset and the combination cards - I don't have any of the cards so I'm basing this off of the checklist and what Collecting Ichiro lists.  I think the Freetime subset shows a couple players (Atsuya Furuta, Ichiro and Kazuhiro Kiyohara) in street clothes.  The combination cards feature two or more players (obviously).  One of them shows Ichiro and Kenjiro Nomura.

The 95 Record Makers subset features nine players who set some sort of record in 1995 - Koji Noda, Yukihiro Nishizaki, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Yoshinori Satoh, Terry Bross, Kenjiro Nomura, Masafumi Hirai, Ichiro and Hiroki Kokubo.  The subset was also available as an uncut sheet.

#549

BBM included two 10 card subsets featuring the best hitters and best pitchers respectively.  The hitters (of which I have none) were Hiromitsu Ochiai, Ichiro, Tomonori Maeda, Atsuya Furuta, Akira Etoh, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Kenjiro Nomura, Koji Akiyama, Hiromi Matsunaga and Hiroo Ishii.  The pitchers were Masaki Saitoh, Masumi Kuwata, Kazuhisa Ishii, Shinji Imanaka, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Masafumi Hirai, Koji Noda, Motoyuki Akahori, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Hideki Irabu.

#570

There were two nine card puzzle subsets - one for Masaki Saitoh and one for Akira Etoh.

#601 front

#601 back

The 1996 set is a bit light on significant rookies.  It does feature Tuffy Rhodes' first Japanese card, but that's not really a rookie card.

#501

#456

The Late Series cards this season featured the Dragons, who were celebrating their 60th Anniversary that year.  The new Dragons cards show them in their uniforms with the 60th Anniversary commemorative patch on the sleeve.  The 60th Anniversary logo was also added to each card.

#637

The only insert card set this year was called "Magic Motion" and featured "SportsFlic"-like multi-image pictures of 12 players (one from each team).  The 12 players were Atsuya Furuta, Akira Etoh, Hideki Matsui, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Shinji Imanaka, Toshiro Yufune, Ichiro, Hideki Irabu, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Yukio Tanaka, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Motoyuki Akahori.

#M1

Some additional sample cards:

#583

Back of card #117 (Hideki Igarashi)

#212

#420 

#18

Scratch Game Card inserted into every pack

Wrapper

UPDATE: On my trip to Japan last March, I was able to pick up a couple examples from the subsets I was missing.  Here's the front and back of a "Freetime" card of Kazuhiro Kiyohara (#280), a combination card of Makoto Sasaki and Koji Akiyama (#284) and a 10 Best Hitters card of Hiromitsu Ochiai (#552):