Thursday, January 2, 2020

2019 In Review - Epoch

2019 was more of the same for Epoch.  They issued 27 sets this past season, the same number they published in 2018.  Once again their products were split between reasonably priced sets and ultra high end sets.

We'll start with the reasonably priced sets.  For the second straight year Epoch published a 432 card "flagship" set called "NPB".  They also published comprehensive team sets called "Rookies & Stars" for eight NPB teams - repeating sets for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Lions, Swallows, and Tigers and adding one for the Fighters.  For the second straight year they published a box set called "Pacific League Rookies" which features all the non-ikusei 2018 draft picks from the six Pacific League teams.

Notably Epoch did not issue a set for the Japan Women's Baseball League this past year.  They had previously issued sets for the league in 2016 and 2018 which makes me wonder if they are publishing them every other year.

The remaining 17 sets Epoch issued were all expensive high end and ultra high end sets which typically featured a box containing four to eight cards for over 10,000 yen.  Each box is guaranteed to contain at least one autograph card and/or one memorabilia card.

Five of the sets feature only OB players.  Two of these were done in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) - aka the OB Club - "Career Achievements" and "OB Club 25th Anniversary".  The other three were team oriented and celebrated anniversaries - the 40th Anniversary of the Swallows' first Nippon Series Championship, the 50th Anniversary of Lotte buying the Orions and the 85th Anniversary of the founding of the Yomiuri Giants.

They issued combination active/OB player sets under the title "Stars & Legends" for nine teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers (or all the teams they issued "Rookies & Stars" sets for plus the Hawks).  The Baystars and Hawks sets ostensibly were celebrations of the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the team and the 30th Anniversary of the team moving to Fukuoka respectively.

Two of the other sets featured active players.  One of these - the "Eagles Season Achievement" set - should probably be considered a 2018 set as it came out in January and celebrates the Eagles 2018 season.  Epoch did several sets under the "Season Achievement" line the past few years but didn't do any other than the Eagles set this past year.  They also issued a "Pacific League Premier Edition" set featuring just players from the Pacific League teams (obviously) for the fourth straight year.

The last Epoch set (well, last in the order I'm listing them, not last in the order they were published) is a set that was not just ultra high-end but "stratospherically high-end" - the Shohei Ohtani "One And Only" set, boxes of which retailed for 129,600 yen (roughly $1170) and contained four cards including an autographed card AND a memorabilia card.

In addition to their sets, Epoch brought back their on-demand cards called Epoch Now One.  Similar to Topps Now, these cards are available for purchase on-line for three days at a time.  The set grew from 680 cards last year to 766 cards this year.  Like last year, Epoch only issued these cards for a subset of the 12 teams although the addition of the Hawks and Swallows to last years group of the Lions, the Dragons, the Tigers, the Marines, the Giants, the Carp and the Fighters brought the total number of teams to nine.  Only the Baystars, Buffaloes and Eagles did not appear on Epoch One cards.

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