Wednesday, January 2, 2019

2018 In Review - BBM

BBM issued 32 sets in 2018 which I think is the fewest they've done in one year since 2008.  As usual I'm counting the cards that have "2018" as their cover date even though a couple of the sets were actually issued in late 2017.

25 of these sets are the ones that BBM issues each year (and that I outlined in this post last May).  This includes the "flagship" 1st and 2nd Version sets, the high end Genesis set, the season summary Fusion set, comprehensive team sets for all 12 NPB teams, the ultra high end Glory set, the Rookie Edition (draft pick) set, the "Farewell" set for players who retired in 2017, the Rookie Edition Premium set, the two cheerleader/dance squad sets ("Hana" and "Mai"), the "Icons" box set (entitled "Fanfare" this year), the "Time Travel 1989" set and the "Infinity" multi-sport set. 

I will mention here that after having issued a set for one particular team's cheerleader/dance squad every year from 2014-17 (Hawks in 2014, Dragons in 2015, Giants in 2016 and Fighters in 2017), BBM did not issue a similar set this year.

After issuing nine team box sets in each of the last two years, BBM only did five this year.  Three of these were "Premium" box sets for the Carp ("Invincible"), Fighters ("Ambitious") and Tigers ("Marvelous").  They also issued a box set for the Hawks that was tied into their 80th Anniversary ("Celebration") as well as another box set for the Carp celebrating their third consecutive Central League Championship ("Three-Peat").

The "Celebration" box set wasn't the only set BBM did in conjunction with the Hawks' 80th Anniversary.  They also issued a pack based Hawks 80th Anniversary set in March that featured OB as well as current players (the "Celebration" box set had mostly current players).  They also took a unique approach to chronicling the history of the Hawks - they created a 27 card "Hawks History" subset that was spread across three sets.  The first nine cards were in the Hawks 80th Anniversary set and covered 1938-68.  The second nine cards were in the Hawks comprehensive team set and covered 1969-88.  The final nine cards were included in "Celebration" and cover 1989 to the present.

The other set BBM did this year was a box set for Shohei Ohtani called "Grateful Days".  This was the first "single player" set they had done in two years.

2 comments:

SumoMenkoMan said...

What was your favorite set this year?

NPB Card Guy said...

Hmm...hard to say. I really liked the design for 1st Version and I thought the Hawks 80th Anniversary set was well done so probably either of those.