Thursday, July 18, 2019

2018 Epoch Pacific League Rookies

Last year Epoch issued a box set called "Pacific League Rookies".  I had asked Ryan to pick me up the base set for it and it was among the cards I got from him when I met up with him in Tokyo.  The set is described very well by its title - it contains cards of all the 2018 rookies (i.e. the fall 2017 draft picks) for the six Pacific League teams.  Wait, let me caveat that a little - it's all the non-ikusei picks from the 2017 draft.  Think of it as essentially half of BBM's Rookie Edition set.

There are 39 cards in the set and they are all player cards.  There's a bit of a high-end feel to the cards as they have a silvery finish (that doesn't scan well) and are printed on a bit thicker stock than normal.  The photos on the cards tend to be of the usual boring "pitchers pitching and batters batting" variety but there's a couple "fielders fielding" shots.  Two of the Hawks cards feature what look like studio shots (similar to the Hawks rookie cards from the 2018 Epoch NPB set).  Here's some example cards:

#27

#20

#05

#14

#34

#10
I like the set and I'm planning on getting this year's version as well.  I'm hoping Epoch continues to do this every year.  I'm even more hopeful they'll add the Central League teams as well.

This is the part of my posts where I usually link to Jambalaya's listing for the set.  Unfortunately I can't right now - Jambalaya's web site has a message up saying that they're closed.  I'm hoping this is a temporary thing but it is possible that the store has gone out of business.  I'll keep checking - if they reopen I'll add the link for this set. UPDATE: My fears were completely unjustified - Jambalaya's website was back today.  Here's the link for the set.

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