Fall Releases

A quick roundup of recently announced sets:

- BBM has announced two more of their perennial sets that were delayed this year.  First up is the second cheerleader/dance squad set.  "Dancing Heroing - Mai" will be out in late September, almost three months later than normal.  The base set will contain 88 cards of members of the "bluelegends" (Lions), "Honeys" (Hawks), "Tohoku Golden Angels" (Eagles), "M☆Splash!!" (Marines), "FIGHTERS GIRL" (Fighters), "VENUS" (Giants), "Tigers Girls" (Tigers), "Cheer Dragons 2020" (Dragons) and "Passion" (Swallows).  For whatever reason the cheerleaders for the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included in the set (and haven't been for a while) and the Carp don't have cheerleaders.  There's a parallel version for each card in the base set and there are autographed cards and "cheki" available in packs.

- The second delayed perennial BBM set is their annual high end set called Genesis.  The base set will be the standard 120 cards - 108 player cards (9 per team) and 12 checklist cards that are unusually thick to mimic the premium cards.  There will be parallel versions of all the player cards although the details aren't on the website.  There are three 12 cards "High Grade" insert sets - "Elite Of Nine" (some sort of plastic card), "Cross Blossom" (some sort of holographic processing) and "Game Changer" (some sort of 3D card).  There's also the usual big assortment of autograph and memorabilia cards - including multiplayer memorabilia cards, "booklet" cards with multiple autographs and buy back autographs (I'm assuming these are old "Diamond Heroes", "Touch The Game" and "Genesis" base set cards but I don't know that for sure).  Each box contains 20 packs containing five cards each, retails for 12,000 yen (~$113) and is guaranteed to contain one memorabilia/autograph card.  The set will be out in late October, a little over a month later than normal.

- Epoch has announced three more of their OB/active player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" label - these will be for the Swallows, Carp and Fighters.  As before these are examples of Epoch's "ultra high end" sets where a box containing four cards will retail for 14,850 yen (~$140).  Each box is guaranteed to include two autograph or memorabilia cards.  The Swallows set will have a base set of 52 cards - 32 active players (and the mascot) and 20 OB players - and will be out on October 3rd.  The Carp set will have a base set of 54 cards including 29 active players and 25 OB players and will be out on October 10th.  The Fighters set will be out a week later on the 17th and has 61 cards in its base set - 37 active and 24 OB (including Shohei Ohtani).  Each set has a 3 card "DECOMORI SIGNATURE" (a processed foil facsimile autograph) and a six card "Gem" insert set - I think each of these is serially numbered and has parallel versions.  Each set has a variety of different autographed cards.  The Carp set also has jersey cards available.

- SCC released their second KBO set of the season a few weeks back.  It's called "Battle Baseball Card Game Vol. 2" and, as you might guess from the name, it's a collectible card game and a follow up to the "Battle Baseball Card Game Vol. 1" set that was released earlier this season.  It has 110 cards in the base set (11 per team) - I don't know off hand if any of those are short printed.  The previous set had 30 short printed cards.  Dan Skrezyna has put the checklist up at the Trading Card Database.