Friday, June 28, 2019

Summer Releases

It's been about five weeks since I did a round up of newly announced sets and there's a bunch that have been announced since then:

- BBM released information on their last three "comprehensive" team sets.  According to Card Fanatic's schedule, the Eagles set will be out on July 11th, the Dragons set will be out on July 18th and the Hawks set will be out on July 25th.  All three sets will have a base set of 81 cards which has been the standard size for BBM's "comprehensive" team sets since 2015.  The Eagles base set will have 69 cards for the manager and players along with three subsets - 3 "Newcomer" cards, 4 "No Surrender" cards and 5 "Meet The Target" cards.  There are also 30 (I think) insert cards spread over five sets - 9 "Never Say Die" cards, 3 "1st Round Draft Picks" cards, 3 "Rising" cards, 3 "Tough Enough" cards and 12 "Phantom" cards.  Autographed cards are also available.  The base set of the Dragons set is made up of 69 manager and player cards, 1 checklist card, 2 "combo" cards and 9 "D's Emblem" cards.  There's 30 insert cards split among 5 sets - 9 "Prime Time" cards, 3 "Blue Label" cards, 3 "Vintage Arms" cards, 3 "Chart In" cards and 12 "Phantom" cards.  Autograph cards are available for this set as well.  The Hawks base set breaks down to 69 cards for the manager and players, 3 "Spring Big Deal" cards, 6 "Get Over" cards and 3 "Fresh Prince" cards.  Like the other two sets there are 30 insert cards available but in this case they're split among four sets - "Elevated" (9 cards), "Closing Bell" (3 cards), "Specialized" (6 cards) and (of course) "Phantom" (12 cards).  The Hawks set also has autographed cards available.  As I mentioned the other day, BBM has announced that Carter Stewart will appear in this set - I do not know if he will simply have a "regular" player card or if there will be an insert or autographed card available for him.

- BBM announced their two annual sets for the cheerleader/dance squads for several of the teams.  The sets are called "Dancing Heroine" and the first one ("Hana") is due out this weekend while the other one ("Mai") will be out on July 27th.  Both sets will have a base set of 89 cards.  Cheerleaders and/or dancers from nine teams are included in the sets - Lions (bluelegends), Hawks (Honeys), Fighters (Fighters Girl), Marines (M * Splash!!), Eagles (Tohoku Golden Angels), Swallows (Passion), Giants (Venus), Dragons (Chia Dragons) and Tigers (Tigers Girls).  The Buffaloes (BsGirls) and Baystars (diana) squads are not included in the set for some reason (and the Carp don't have cheerleaders or a dance squad).  Apparently there's no duplication of the cheerleaders between the two sets although I don't know if that means that all of the members of the squads are included between the two sets.  There are autographed and "cheki" cards available for both sets.  I think there are parallel versions of the base cards but there are no insert cards.

- 2nd Version, BBM's second "flagship" set (or second half of their "flagship" set) will be released on August 7th.  The base set for it looks pretty much the same as it has for the last four or five years.  There's 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 36 "1st Version Update" cards (3 per team), 36 "Cross Sunrise" cards (3 per team, continuing the subset started in 1st Version), 12 team checklist cards (that I would bet are going to feature mascots because BBM is that damn predictable) and an as yet unknown number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards featuring various Japanese celebrities (and horror movie characters as Sadako is making her fourth appearance on one of these cards).  There are three 12 card insert sets (1 player from each team) - "Franchise Builder", "Young Core" and "Phantom".  The "Phantom" cards are serially numbered to 25 (I assume the ones for the team sets are as well but it's not mentioned on the webpages for the sets).  There are memorabilia cards available for Koji Chikamoto of the Tigers and Ryosuke Tatsumi of the Eagles along with a wide variety of autographed cards.

- Epoch's eighth "Rookies & Stars" "comprehensive" team set of 2019 will be released on July 6th and will feature the Carp.  The base set has 69 cards - all "regular" player cards.  I think the rookie cards have two different parallel versions available.  It also has three serially numbered insert sets - Masqued Black, Masqued Red and Gem.  These are apparently Epoch's answer to BBM's cross set "Phantom" insert cards as they've been included with all their "Rookies & Stars" sets this year.  The set also has autograph and memorabilia cards available as well as autographed memorabilia cards.

- Epoch is apparently making an annual set out of their Pacific League Rookies set.  This is a box set that includes cards for all the non-ikusei picks for the six Pacific League teams from last fall's draft.  Each box contains 46 cards - the complete 44 card base set plus one serially numbered parallel card (ether a gold or hologram foil facsimile autograph card) and one serially numbered authentic autographed card (either silver or hologram foil).  Unopened boxes are retailing for 9400 yen (around $88) and will be out on August 10th.

- Epoch's latest ultra high end set is a "Stars & Legends" set dedicated to the Hawks.  This is a combination active/OB player set that appears to be tied into the Hawks' 30th Anniversary of their move to Fukuoka.  The base set contains 32 cards - 14 of which I think are active players.  Each box retails for 14,400 yen (~$135) and contains only four cards, two of which are autographed cards.  There are also Holospectra insert cards as well as the serially numbered Gem "cross set" insert cards.  The set will be out on August 24th.  (And as far as I can tell this set will not include Carter Stewart.)

- Hits (or Yes) has announced another "Used Ball Card" team set, this time for the Hawks.  Like the previously announced sets for the Baystars and Swallows, this set has a base set of 81 cards but apparently only includes 16 players (which does not include Stewart).  There are a variety of parallel and authentic autographed cards available with the set.  It will be released on August 10th.

- Yesterday Dan Skrezyna tweeted out information about the latest KBO set from SCC.  This is the first set for 2019 in Korea and apparently came out in the last week or so.  The set contains 300 total cards although 100 of those are autographed cards.  The 200 card base set is split among normal (90), rare (50), holo (30), signature (20)  and rookie (10) cards.  Boxes retail for W24,000 (~$21) and contain 30 packs containing five cards each.  6/30/19 UPDATE - Dan says that the base set is really just 190 cards as the 10 rookie cards are short prints.  He has a friend who opened 3040 boxes of cards and got just 5 rookie cards.

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