Wednesday, December 14, 2016

BBM's Back In The Ultra High End Set Business

BBM issued the first Japanese ultra high-end set almost two years ago with a set called "Master Of Insert".  This set was issued in packs of six cards (well, five cards plus a checklist card) for 15,000 yen.  It apparently was quite popular but BBM pretty much ceded the market for these sets to Epoch since then - Epoch issued two sets along the lines of this in 2015 and almost all their sets this year have been along similar lines.  BBM is getting back in the ultra high-end game with their first set that has a "cover date" of 2017 - Rising Sun.

Rising Sun's base set (and I use the term loosely) contains 36 cards.  Unlike "Master Of Insert", all the cards are of active rather than OB players so as you've probably already guessed, there's three players per team.  Each card is serially numbered to no more than 99.  There's a parallel version of each card available as well that's serially numbered to no more than 50.  There's two insert sets - a 36 card set called "Night Breaker" (serially numbered to 50 or less)  and a 12 card set called "The Prime 3D" (serially numbered to 25 or less).  (And yes, one of the "insert" sets is the same size as the "base" set.)  There are 23 types of memorabilia cards (15 of which have a patch version), 19 autograph cards, 1 autograph and memorabilia card (not sure who it is) and 1 autographed ball card (for Yuki Matsui).  I'd be willing to bet that the memorabilia and/or autographed cards are serially numbered but I don't know that for sure and I don't know how many there would be.

The players included in the set are mostly the young stars of NPB - Shohei Ohtani, Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Yanagita, Shun Takayama, Shintaro Fujinami, Shogo Akiyama, Yasuaki Yamasaki, Hayato Sakamoto, Seiya Suzuki, and Yosuke Nomura among others.  I think T-Okada of Orix might be the oldest player included.

Each box contains six cards and has an MSRP of 13,000 yen (although Discount Niki had it at 14,040 yen before they sold out).  I don't know if there's any guarantee of an autograph or memorabilia card in the box.  There are only 1500 boxes being produced.  It's being released in late December.

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