New Team Sets

I wanted to do a quick post about some recently announced "comprehensive" team sets from Epoch and BBM as well as a couple team issued sets that were released earlier this month.

- Epoch has announced four new team sets (titled "Rookies & Stars") to go with the three previously announced sets (two of which have been released already) - the Buffaloes, the Dragons, the Fighters and the Swallows.  The Buffloes set has a 67 card base set with two different serially numbered parallels of the rookie cards (I think).  It will be out on May 25th.  The Dragons set has a 70 card base set (14 cards of which have a photo variant) and two insert sets - Rookie Sensation and Force Of The Dragon.  Its release date is June 8th.  The base set for the Fighters set has 70 cards.  There are also two insert sets - Seven Rookies and Newest Member.  The set will hit the stores on June 15th.  The Swallows base set has 69 cards and what appear to be the same kind of parallels for the rookie cards that the Buffaloes set has.  All four sets (like the three previous sets) have three serially numbered insert sets - Masqued Black, Masqued Red and Gem - these appear to be Epoch's version of BBM's "Phantom" inserts that are common for all their team sets.  All four sets also have a plethora of autograph cards available but the Fighters set is the only one with memorabilia cards available.  With seven team sets announced Epoch has matched the number of "comprehensive" team sets they did last year although they switched out the Carp for the Fighters.  I will be curious if they will do the other five teams or not.

- The announcements of the Lions and Tigers team sets from BBM brings their total announced team sets to seven also.  As has been the standard for BBM's "comprehensive" team sets the past few years, both sets have an 81 card base set that's broken into a variety of subsets.  The Lions base set has 68 cards for the players and manager plus three subsets - "College Connection" (4 cards), "New Blue Blood" (4 cards) and "Pole Position" (5 cards).  The set also has 30 insert cards split between four sets - "No Way Back" (9 cards), "Overture" (6 cards), "Power Plant" (3 cards) and "Phantom" (12 cards).  The set will be out in late-May.  The details are a little sketchier on the Tigers set - the base set has 68 cards for the players and three subsets - a three card one featuring young players, a five card one featuring the starting rotation and a five card on featuring position players.  There's four insert sets - a nine card on featuring main players, a six card one that I'm not sure what is, a three card one for veterans and 18 "Phantom" cards.  The set's release date is in mid-June.  Both sets feature various autograph cards.

- Jambalaya had information up about a couple team issued sets that were released April.  There's a 78 card set for the Orix Buffaloes that features cards of all the players on the roster plus two of their mascots (but oddly enough not manager Norifumi Nishimura).  The Eagles have been issuing an annual set for at least seven years now.  This year's edition includes a 91 card base set (82 player cards which do not include mascots or manager Yusuke Hiraishi but does include the Eagles ikusei players plus nine cards highlighting milestones and titles Eagles players earned in 2018) which has a signature parallel version.  There's also a couple insert sets available including one that's die-cut.