2019 BBM Farewell Set

Among the cards that Ryan had waiting for me in Japan was BBM's annual box set entitled something like "Regret At Parting Baseball Player" or "Farewell" as I inaccurately refer to it.  This set has been released each January since 2011 and features the many of the players who announced their retirement the previous year. 

The base set for this year's edition contains 40 cards which makes it the second largest one of these sets ever, behind the 2013 set which had 41 cards.  Since every player in this year's set has only one card it actually has the most players represented ever - the 2013 set had four players with multiple cards so it only represented 37 players.  The big names in this year's set include Takahiro Arai, Hitoki Iwase, Kazuo Matsui, Masahiro Araki, Toshiya Sugiuchi, Shuichi Murata and Takuya Asao.  About half the cards feature photos from the player's retirement ceremony including several who are receiving their do-age from their teammates.  All the players are depicted in their most recent NPB uniform, even if they spent most of their career with another team like Hiroyasu Tanaka who played for the Swallows from 2005 to 2016 but is shown with DeNA who he spent the last two seasons with or Kenji Ohtonari who's shown with the Marines who he spent one season with after 11 years with the Hawks.  Murata had spent 2018 with the Tochigi Golden Braves of the independent Baseball Challenge League and so is shown with the Giants, his team in 2017.  Here's a couple example cards:

#03

#24

#01

#13

I should mention that as usual Ryan got me an opened set.  The unopened sets include an autographed card in addition to the base set.

This is another one of BBM's sets that pretty much is the same from year to year.  I can't say it's a great set but for some reason I like getting it each year.

You can see all the cards (as usual) over at Jambalaya.