Wednesday, October 25, 2017

2017 BBM Team Sets

It's taken me most of the month but I'm finally wrapping up the last of the sets that Ryan sent me at the end of September.  For the third year in a row Ryan tracked down all 12 of BBM's pack based team sets for me. 

Also for the third year in a row, BBM's pack based team sets this year each had 81 cards in their base set.  Each set featured the team's manager as well as all the players on the team's 70 man roster at the time the set went to press (not that any team actually had 70 players on their roster).  The Tigers set also had a card for ni-gun manager Masayuki Kakefu.  Each set also had several subsets and all of them except the Swallows had a single card for all their mascots - the Swallows had three mascot cards.  Two of the sets (the Swallows and Baystars) also had a separate checklist card although several of the sets had the set checklist on the back of the mascot card.  Here's a breakdown of the cards in each set:

Team Player/Manager Cards Mascot Cards Checklist Subsets
Chiba Lotte Marines 68 1 0 Seawall Quartet (4), 2017 New Wave (3), Award winner '16 (5)
Chunichi Dragons 69 1 0 New Face (4), Lord Of Dragons (7)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 68 1 0 Cutting Edge (3), First Headlines (4), Heavy Hitters Squad (5)
Hanshin Tigers 68 1 0 Newcomer (3), Milestone (3), Heart Of Tigers (6)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp 68 1 0 The Brightest Hope (3), Titlist (9)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 68 1 0 16 Crowns (7), Fresh Face (2), Spring Smash (3)
Orix Buffaloes 67 1 0 Newcomer (2), Honor Of Bs(11)
Saitama Seibu Lions 69 1 0 Mega Impact(5), High Velocity (3), New Energy(3)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 66 1 0 Newcomer (2), Great Promise (3), Eager Eagles(9)
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 67 3 1 Aces (1), Rookies (1), Triple Three (3), Full Of Hope (5)
Yokohama DeNA Baystars 68 1 1 Tsutsugoh Sequence (3), Yokohama Pride (3), First Draft Pick (3), Vital To V (2)
Yomiuri Giants 68 1 0 Play For Giants (6), Giants Elite (3), Giants Axis (3)

I do want to point out that the Carp team set has a subset dedicated to the award winners from 2016 that SHOULD have been called "Titleist" but is misspelled "Titlist" which of course makes the middle schooler in me giggle uncontrollably.

As always each set features about 30 to 35 players who don't appear in BBM's flagship sets.  Here's an example card from each set showing a player who did not appear in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets:

2017 BBM Marines #M17

2017 BBM Dragons #D20

2017 BBM Hawks #H21

2017 BBM Tigers #T63

2017 BBM Carp #C49

2017 BBM Fighters #F10

2017 BBM Buffaloes #Bs07

2017 BBM Lions #L44

2017 BBM Eagles #E09

2017 BBM Swallows #S14

2017 BBM Baystars #DB39

2017 BBM Giants #G05
As you can see, all the sets used a different design.  I think the Eagles and Fighters sets ended up being the most attractive this year - both feature a nice card design combined with a good selection of photos.

All the sets were released between March and July.

Thanks as always to Ryan for doing all the work to find these sets for me.

2 comments:

Deanna said...

I just buy the Fighters team pack at Mint every year. Finding every team wouldn't be too hard if I went to more than one Mint store over a period of a few weeks, I think, though I've pretty much never bought any team sets except Fighters and occasionally the Swallows/Marines. They like opening packs for the expensive insert cards and then sell the remaining cards in a set for cheap (like 1500ish yen for all 68 cards).

NPB Card Guy said...

I'm pretty sure Ryan gets some of the sets via Yahoo! Japan Auctions and a lot of them can be had for 1000 yen or less that way. It may not be a lot of work for him but it is extremely generous of him to do this for me.

Opening packs for the chase cards and selling the base sets cheap is pretty standard. So is opening a 10000 yen box set for the "special" card and then selling the base set for 500 yen.