2019 Calbee Series Three

Series Three, Calbee's third set for the year (or the third part of Calbee's 2019 set which is probably the more correct way to think about it) was released just about a month ago.  The base set for it contains 88 cards - 72 player cards (6 per team), a 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset and four checklist cards.

Now if you've been paying close attention to the posts I've done on the blog, you might be asking yourself "Hey, I remember a post about Calbee Series One this year but I don't remember one about Series Two.  Did I miss it?"  You did not.  A friend picked me up a Series Two set back in July and shipped it to me in August but it has somehow vanished in between Japan and Maryland.  I'm still holding out hope that it's simply stuck in customs and will show up soon but we may need to just give up and replace it.  Luckily as my friend says "it's easily replaceable!".  Sooner or later I'll have a Series Two set in my hands.

Anyway, back to Series Three.  It's pretty much your usual Calbee set.  The player cards use the same design as the Series One set which is pretty much the same design (with a few tweaks) that Calbee's been using since the late 1990's.  Photo selection is the usual heavy mix of "batters batting and pitchers pitching" but there's more than a few shots that depart from this.  There's only a couple player cards that use a horizontal format - they could add some variety by having more of them.  The cards continue the numbering from the earlier set so they are numbered from 145 to 216.

The set includes a number of NPB stars - Tetsuto Yamada, Shogo Akiyama, Hideto Asamura, Yoshihiro Maru, Yuki Yanagita, Takehiro Norimoto, Yuki Matsui, Yasuaki Yamasaki and Wladimir Balentien.   Some of the players who appear in this set (Takumi Kuriyama, Daichi Suzuki and Yota Kyota for example) also appeared in the Series One set.  I assume there are players included who were in Series Two as well.

Here's some example cards:

#157

#215

#178

#206

#146

#152

#204

The "Exciting Scene" subset shows a highlight from the first half of the season for each team.  I'm not sure what all of these are but there are some obvious ones of players reaching milestones (since the player is shown holding up a sign listing the milestone) - Hotaka Yamakawa of the Lions' 100th home run, Naoki Miyanishi of the Fighters' 300th Hold, Katsuya Kakunaka of the Marines' 1000th hit, Norichika Aoki of the Swallows' 1500th NPB hit and Jose Lopez of the Baystars' 1517th consecutive errorless chance (which was a new NPB record).  Other players featured are Tsuysohi Wada (first game at the ichi-gun level since 2017), Ginji Akaminai (two games with five hits in one week), Takayoshi Noma (not sure what this is for), Hayato Sakamoto (reached base by hit or walk in 36 straight games to start the season), Yudai Ohno (complete game victory against the Carp on May 7th with 13 strikeouts) and Kosuke Fukudome (oldest Tiger to hit a sayanora home run on May 5th).  Here's the card for Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Buffaloes whose card is for him throwing 24 consecutive shut out innings against the Hawks, including his start on May 28th where Orix was wearing throwback Hankyu Braves jerseys:

#ES-04

The checklists feature some random game action photos from May and June featuring Takashi Ogino of the Marines, Shuhei Takahashi of the Dragons, Kazuya Fujita of the Eagles and Fumihito Haraguchi of the Tigers (making his return to the ichi-gun level after beating cancer earlier this year).  The checklists are numbered C-09 to C-12 as they continue the numbering started in the earlier two sets.  Here's the Ogino card:

#C-09

You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya as usual.  They also show the insert cards (the ubiquitous "Star" cards) and the special box set available for a "lucky card" redemption called (I think) "Control Tower" - it features the main catcher from each team.