I'd been putting off writing about any new stuff for a little bit since there had only been news about two sets but then suddenly this week information about five more sets came out. So without further ado...
- Calbee's Series One set is scheduled for release on March 16th (although it will likely be available a few days before that). It looks pretty similar to the other recent Calbee issues. The base set looks to be 88 cards - 72 "regular" player cards (6 per team), 12 subset cards split between three different themes - two cards for last year's league champions (the Lions and the Giants), one card for the Nippon Series champions (the Hawks - remember that the league champion is the team that finishes first, not the team that wins the Climax Series and represents the league in the Nippon Series) and nine cards for "Record Achievement" - and four checklist cards. The one change I see is that the ubiquitous "Star" insert set is gone this year - instead there's a 20 card "Title Holder" insert set along with a 9 card "Legend" insert set for players who retired last year. The checklist is available here.
- BBM flagship set 1st Version will be out in early April. At first glance it looks like BBM's not really changing much - the numbers for the set look pretty much like they have for the past six years as the base set will contain 372 cards - 324 player cards (27 per team), 12 team checklist cards and 36 "Cross Blossoms" subset cards - this last is a cross set subset that will be completed in 2nd Version in August. There's the usual assortment of signature parallels for 108 of the player cards (9 per team) plus parallel versions of the rookie cards. 12 cards have "secret" versions - short printed photo variations and 12 other cards have "ultra secret" version - even shorter printed photo variations. There are four 12 card insert sets - "Japonism", "New Age Star", "3D Cross Blossom" and something called "Cross Foil Signing". There is also the usual assortment of autograph cards plus memorabilia cards for Rei Takahashi and Munetaka Murakami (last year's Rookie Of The Years). I will say that the example cards on BBM's website look really good.
- The first two of BBM's "comprehensive" team sets have been announced. Both the Buffaloes and Swallows sets will be out in early April. As usual the base sets have 81 cards. In the Buffaloes case that breaks down to 68 cards for the manager and players plus four subsets that make up the other 13 cards (although the website only lists three). The Swallows web page doesn't break down the 81 base set cards at all. Both sets have several insert sets - the Buffaloes have five sets for a total of 30 cards including 12 "Phantom" cards while the Swallows have three sets for a total of 36 cards including 18 "Phantom" cards. Both sets will have a myriad of autographed cards available.
- While BBM is doing pretty much the same thing they've been doing the past few years, Epoch is changing things a little with their "Rookies & Stars" team sets, at least based on what I'm seeing with their first two offerings for 2020. In the past two years Epoch's "Rookies & Stars" team sets have been "comprehensive" ones - which means they've featured every player on the team's 70 man roster plus the manager and possibly a coach or two. The base sets have therefore been in the neighborhood of 70 cards in size. The two sets Epoch's announced so far this year, the Lions and the Swallows, only have 36 cards in their base set so they are no longer "comprehensive". I'm a little disappointed by this as I was hoping the competition would force BBM to improve their product some. Epoch appears to be doing the same things for both sets so each card of the base set has a parallel version and there's either four or eleven insert sets (depending on how you want to count them) associated with each set - "Uniform Number" (Silver, Gold or Team Color versions), "Metal Power" (Silver, Gold, Hologram), "Time To Shine Hologram" (versions A, B and C) and "Gem" (regular and Black). A bunch of these are serially numbered. There's also a boatload of possible autograph cards. The Lions set will be released on April 18th and the Swallows set comes out a week later on the 25th.
- Epoch celebrated the 85th Anniversary of the Giants last fall with an ultra high end set called something like "The Legendary Players Giants 85th Anniversary" 2020 marks the 85th Anniversary of the founding of the Hanshin Tigers and Epoch is issuing a similar set called "The Legendary Players Tigers 85th Anniversary". This is another ultra high end set so each box retails for 16,500 yen (around $148) and contains six cards - two of which are guaranteed to be autographed. The base set has 33 cards which feature retired Tigers players including Koichi Tabuchi, Yutaka Enatsu and Randy Bass. There are a bunch of autograph cards available (obviously) including some booklet ones with multiple autographs or a combination of an autograph and a uniform patch. The set will be released on March 21st.
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