A Bunch Of New Stuff

Here's a quick roundup of some upcoming releases:

- BBM has announced three more of their pack based team sets - the Buffaloes, the Baystars and the Fighters.  Each set has an 81 card base set.  The Buffaloes set has 67 cards for the players and manager, a 3 card "Newcomer" subset and one or more subsets that total 11 cards, BBM did not provide a break down of the cards in the Buffaloes base set and Fighters have 69 cards for their players and manager, a 7 card subset called "'16 Crowns", a two card "Fresh Face" subset and a three card "'17 Spring Smash" subset.  All three sets have insert cards available but there's not much detail for the Buffaloes and Baystars sets other than I think there are at least 6 "Phantom" inserts for the Buffaloes and there's a total of 18 insert cards for the Baystars but I'm not sure if that include their "Phantom" inserts or not.  The Fighters set will have 36 possible insert cards - "Ready To Break Out" (9 cards), "Northern Lights" (9 cards) and "Phantom" (18 cards).  All three sets also have an assortment of associated autograph cards and the Fighters set has memorabilia cards including jersey cards of Shohei Ohtani.  The Buffaloes set will be out in mid-June while the Baystars and Fighters sets will be out in late June.

- Last time I did a roundup of new releases I mentioned that BBM was putting out a high end box set for the Dragons called "Heat".  Apparently "Heat" is going to be a series because they've now announced a high end box set for the Tiger called "Heat".  This set is slightly bigger and more expensive than the Dragons set.  Each box runs 12,000 yen (~$120) and contains 30 cards - a 27 card base set, one insert card and two autograph cards.  The set will be out at the end of June.

- I've previously mentioned that Epoch had announced some inexpensive pack based team sets for the Lions, Hawks, Baystars and Swallows.  They've since announced that they are doing similar sets for the Carp and Dragons.  The Carp set will have a 36 card base set and the Dragons set will have a 30 card base set.  Both sets will have the same features as the previously announced ones - photo variants for all the cards, a parallel version of the primary base set, some sort of insert cards and  scratch off cards that give you points that can be redeemed for autographed cards.  The Carp set will be out July 1 and the Dragons set will be out July 15.

- Last year Epoch did one of their high end sets for the Pacific League.  The six card boxes were a whopping 16,200 yen (~$155).  Epoch has announced a similar set this year but it's much more affordable.  Each 80 card box (20 packs of four cards) is 4490 yen (around $44).  The base set is 54 cards - 9 cards for each team.  The set is similar to their team sets - there's photo variants and a parallel issue for each card in the base set, there are 36 (six per team) "holographic" insert cards and there are scratch off cards for points that can be redeemed for autographs.  The set will be out on July 22nd.

- I normally don't check to see what baseball cards are available for the Shikoku Island League teams but this year is a little different since Manny Ramirez is playing for the Kochi Fighting Dogs.  Kochi's team set is available on their website for 3000 yen (~$30) and includes two cards of Manny.  There's roughly 30 cards total in the set - other people of note in the set are former Giant and Baystar and meikyukai member Norihiro Komada who is the manager of the team, Lars Anderson who played in MLB with the Red Sox and was also in the Indians, White Sox, Cubs and Dodger organization, one time Mets farm hand Richard Ruff and Zach Colby, the team's other foreign player.  I do not know if Kochi will send merchandise overseas but if you are interested in this (or any of the other Manny Ramirez stuff Kochi is selling) I'm sure that most of the proxy companies will be able to accommodate you.