Late Summer Releases

Here's information on some new sets that will be released in the next month or so:

- The Hawks are celebrating their 80th Anniversary this year.  BBM commemorated this with a 90 card Hawks Anniversary set back in late March.  That set contained a nine card "Hawks History" subset.  I was kind of baffled that the subset only covered from 1938 to 1968.  A few months later BBM released their annual Hawks team set which contained a nine card continuation of the "Hawks History" subset.  This one covered 1968 to 1988 which made me wonder if they were only covering the Nankai years.  Now BBM has announced a box set for the Hawks entitled "Hawks 80th Anniversary" that features a 27 card base set including the final (I assume) "Hawks History" subset.  It looks like the nine "Hawks History" cards covers the years since 1989.  The other 18 cards feature players from the 2018 Hawks team wearing the 80th Anniversary commemorative uniforms.  The boxes also include either a memorabilia card or an autograph card - possible autographs include people who aren't in the base set - including Hawks president Sadaharu Oh.  The set will be released in late August.

- BBM is releasing a third "Premium" team box set.  This one is for the Hanshin Tigers and is called "Marvelous".  Like the two previous ones ("Invincible" for the Carp and "Ambitious" for the Fighters) each box contains 29 cards - a 27 card base set plus 1 serially numbered "TRUSTWORTHY" insert card and 1 autographed card.  It will out in early September.  And like "Ambitious" the set's name reminds me of a music video from the mid-1980's:



- Epoch is releasing two more team based ultra high end "Stars & Legends" sets - one for the Dragons (out on August 25th) and the Buffaloes (September 8th).  The boxes for the Dragons set retail for 13,600 yen while the Buffaloes boxes are 12,600 yen.  The boxes only contain six cards but at least two of them are guaranteed to be autographed cards.  The Dragons set has a base set of 39 cards - 29 active players and 10 retired players - while the Buffaloes set has a base set of somewhere between 30 and 34 cards - 26 active and 4-8 OB players.  Both sets have a wide variety of autograph cards available.

- After being limited to only two Series last year due to a potato shortage, Calbee is returning to three Series this season.  Series Three will be released around September 17th and will feature 88 cards in its base set, just like Series One and Two did.  There will be 72 "regular" player cards (6 per team), a 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset and the ubiquitous four checklist cards.  In addition there will be the usual 24 "Star" insert/premium subset cards and a 12 card "Lucky Card" redemption set (called something like "Team Killing" cards which Google Translate is probably not quite translating correctly).  As usual the checklist for the set is available on-line.

- The Baystars are putting out a team issued set in late September.  It's a pack based set that has an 81 card base set that apparently only features 15 players (including manager Alex Ramirez).  There will be a variety of autograph cards available and I think there will also be memorabilia cards.  The set will be out on September 22nd.