2019 Calbee Series Two

I mentioned when I did my post on Calbee's Series Three set from this year last month that my Series Two set had gotten lost somewhere between Japan and Maryland after Sean put it in the mail in August.  We'd pretty much given up any hope of seeing it and Sean was preparing to send me a replacement set when the package unexpectedly got delivered to my house today.  I actually thought for a moment it was the replacement package but the postmark on it was from August.  The box was kind of beaten up after its 2 1/2 month journey but the cards in it were fine. 

The set was released back at the end of June and has a base set of 88 cards - 72 player cards (6 per team), 12 "Opening Day Starting Pitcher" cards (1 for each team) and four checklist cards.  It uses the same design for the player cards as the Series One and Three sets which are numbered consecutively with the other two sets (Series One was numbers 1-72, Series Two is numbers 73-144 and Series Three was numbers 145-216).

The set is pretty much your standard Calbee set (which seems to be what I say about every one of their sets).  The player cards are attractive but, as Sean talks about in his post about the set, the photo selection is pretty monotonous.  There's only two cards that aren't in the "pitchers pitching, batters batting, catchers catching" category - Seiya Suzuki and Sosuke Genda.  There's only two cards that use a horizontal format which at least break it up a little bit.  The player selection includes a number of stars - Suzuki, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh, Tomoya Mori, Hayato Sakamoto, Sho Nakata and Munetaka Murakami - as well as a couple of 2018 draft picks - Koji Chikamoto of the Tigers, Kaito Kozono of the Carp and Taiga Kamichatani of the Baystars.  Here's some example cards:

#075

#093

#104

#083

#100

The 12 "Opening Day Starting Pitcher" subset features the...uh...12 2019 Opening Day starting pitchers.  This subset include Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants, Kodai Senga of the Hawks, Shota Imanaga of the Baystars, Daichi Ohsera of the Carp and Randy Messenger of the Tigers:

#OP-12

The checklists feature same random game action photos from the first couple weeks of the season in late March and April.  I'll echo Sean's comment that these are the best photos in the entire set.  The cards show Sho Nakata of the Fighters jumping on home plate after hitting a sayonara grand slam on Opening Day, Yoshihiro Maru of the Giants on the "Hero Of The Game" stage after Yomiuri's win on April 3rd, Yutaro Sugimoto of the Buffaloes celebrating after hitting two home runs on April 13th and Keita Sano's sayonara pinch hit single on March 31st.  The cards are numbered C-05 to C-08 in continuation of Series One.  Here's the Maru card:

#C-06

As always you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya, including the usual Star insert cards and the special box set (that I think it available via a mail in redemption of "lucky cards") called "Hit Leaders".