Spring Releases

Thought I'd do a quick post on the recently announced sets that will be released over the next two months.

- The Heisei Era is scheduled to come to a close in a little over a month and BBM is celebrating the era with a new multi-sport set.  I'm not quite sure how the name translates but I think it's basically called "Heisei".  BBM hasn't released a lot of details about the set - for example I can't tell you how many cards are in the set or what kind of insert cards there will be other than metal cards and "Phantom" inserts.  I assume there will be autograph card but I don't know that for sure.  As is typical of BBM's multi-sport sets the bulk of the athletes included are baseball players (both OB and active) but the other sports represented in the set include wrestling, boxing, speed & figure skating, soccer, softball, judo, bicycling, tennis, basketball and handball.  The set will be released in late April (Jambalaya has the release date as April 27th, three days before the Emperor abdicates).

- BBM has announced two more of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  This time it's for the Carp and the Giants.  Both sets have a base set of 81 cards.  The base set for the Carp breaks down to 70 "regular" cards, two "Newcomer" cards, three "Starters" cards, four "Points of Team(?)" cards and two "Dominican Spirit" cards.  There are 48(!) insert cards - I'm not entirely sure what some of the insert sets are but there is a two card "One Step Beyond" set, a 15 card "Esperanza" set and an 18 card "Phantom" set.  There are also autograph and memorabilia cards available.  The Giants' base set consists of 66 "regular" cards, 1 mascot/checklist card, four "Giant Four" cards, four "Glorious Number" cards, three "Growing Hope" cards and three "G-Genuine" cards.  There are a whopping 66 insert cards split among seven different sets - "Giants Pride 2019" (15 cards), "Up And Coming" (3 cards), "Cross Foil Signing" (15 cards serially numbered to 15),  "Combo Cross Foil Signing" (3 cards serially numbered to 15), "Super Metallic Giants" (9 cards serially numbered to the player's uniform number - I think you actually get a redemption card for these), "Triplex 2019" (3 cards serially numbered to 25) and "Phantom" (18 cards serially numbered to 25*).  There are parallel versions of the "regular" player cards in the base set as well as the "Giants Pride 2019" and "Up And Coming" inserts.  There are also memorabilia and autograph cards available as well.  The Carp set will be out in mid-May while the Giants set will be out in late May.

* I assume the Carp "Phantom" cards are also numbered to 25 but the webpage doesn't say so.

- Epoch's third "Rookies & Stars" team set this year is for the Baystars.  This is another "comprehensive" team set that features 71 cards in its base set - all of which appear to be "regular" player cards.  There are a couple insert sets but as usual it's not very clear what they are.  There are several varieties of autograph cards available also.  The set will be out on May 18th.

- For the second year in a row, Epoch is releasing a "flagship" set.  Like last year's set, it's called "NPB" and has a base set of 432 cards (36 per team).  There are three varieties of parallels for some of the cards - "regular kira" (72 cards), "silver foil" (60 cards) and "hologram foil" (24 cards).  There are also 36 GEM insert cards and 24 autograph cards - both of these are serially numbered but I don't know what they are numbered to.  The set will be released on May 25th.