BBM Pack Busting

I don't buy a lot of unopened material as I like to collect complete sets and it's been frustrating in the past to attempt to build BBM sets via packs and boxes.  I also don't usually buy BBM's team sets - mostly because I have to draw the line somewhere (I can't get EVERYTHING).  A couple of weeks ago, however, I noticed a guy on Ebay selling some 2013 team set packs at about half of face value (~$2 for a pack with a face value of 420 yen) and decided to pick some up.  With my first order, I picked up two packs each for the Hawks, Marines and Lions.  A couple of days later, he put up some Fighters packs and I bought five of them, trying to maximize my Shohei Ohtani rookie cards.  I got the Fighters cards yesterday and discovered that the seller had thrown in a bonus Marines pack as well.  (He'd also included some 2011 & 2013 1st Version cards in both orders.)  I thought it might be fun and instructive to show off the packs and what I got in them.

First the Hawks:

Unopened Hawks Pack

Contents of pack 1

Contents of pack 2

Each pack has seven cards, including one parallel foil card.  I'm not generally a big fan of the foil cards but I kind of like the Hawks ones because of the Hawks silhouette on it.  The Hawks set had 99 cards in it of which 90 were player/manager/mascot cards (all with the same background).  There were also three combination cards, five "Newcomer" cards and a checklist.  With that breakdown, it's not surprising that I got almost all player cards.

Unopened Lions pack

Contents of pack 1

Contents of pack 2

The Lions set also contained 99 cards but only 72 of them were "regular" cards for players/manager/mascots.  The other 27 cards were made up of several subsets - two checklists, a "Title Holder" card, two three card subsets containing a sequence of pictures of a player ("Lifeline"), three cards labelled "Idol", three cards labelled "Origins", three cards labelled "New Power" and a nine card "Spirit of Lions" subset.  I did a little better with variety with these cards picking up four subsets cards as well as an insert card - "Lead To Victory".

Unopened Marines pack

Contents of pack 1

Contents of pack 2

Contents of pack 3

Like the Lions set, 72 of the 99 cards in the Marines set were for the players, the manager and the mascot.  There was also a nine card puzzle subset featuring Naoya Masuda and Katsuya Kakunaka, a four card "Hopeful Rookies" subset, a two card "Moving Up" subset, a three card "Newcomer" subset, an eight card "Reliable Veteran" subset and one checklist card.  I like the fact that the back of the puzzle card shows you where that particular card goes so you can see what the whole picture looks like even if you don't have all the cards:

My luck with the first two sets' packs did not hold out with the Marines - I ended up with two doubles along with both the parallel version and non-parallel version of one card.  That's kind of frustrating given that I only opened three packs but given what I've experienced before with BBM, not terribly surprising.

Unopened Fighters pack

Contents of pack 1

Contents of pack 2

Contents of pack 3

Contents of pack 4

Contents of pack 5

The Fighters set was a little different.  Once again it was a 99 card set although it was only numbered 1 to 98.  There were two different versions of card #2 - #2a showed Shohei Ohtani pitching and #2b showed Ohtani batting.  71 cards depicted either a player, the manager or a mascot.  The remaining cards included a checklist card, a six card "Best Scenes 2012" subset, a five card "Newcomer" subset, a seven card "Rookie" subset and a nine card Shohei Ohtani puzzle subset.

I was a little disappointed with these packs.  If you look above, you'll see that the contents of pack 1 and pack 3 were identical except for the parallel card.  I also ended up getting triples of Kensuke Kondoh.  On the plus side, I got four different Ohtani cards, an insert card ("Keep Evolving!") of Daikan Yoh and, best of all, no mascot cards.  Still though, having the equivalent of one of the five packs you buy be all doubles is kind of annoying.  (Although two of those doubles are Ohtani so maybe it pays off in a few years...)

In addition to the 2013 team packs, I also recently picked up an unopened pack of 1995 BBM:

Unopened 1995 pack

Half the pack contents

The rest of the pack

Hmm, opening a pack and getting an Ichiro card and a Sadaharu Oh card - not too shabby.  Of course, the downside is that I already had both of those cards and as 1995 is one of the BBM sets that I don't have many cards from, I really would have preferred new cards.  But still, those are nice cards I can sell or trade.