2020 BBM 30th Anniversary Set

 Thursday was Christmas morning for me.  In addition to getting the Yamakatsu Tabuchi card in the mail from Larry, I received a package containing several sets from Noppin.  I had picked up four sets over the last two months that were released several weeks apart from each other and it made sense to wait until I had all four for Noppin to ship them rather than have them ship each set to me separately.  It was amazing how fast I got the sets.  The final set I bought was the Calbee Series Three set which I got on Friday, October 16th.  Noppin had it at their warehouse by Monday, October 19th and I requested shipping that day.  Noppin gave me the shipping quote the next day and I paid it (4000 yen or roughly $40 - expensive but cheaper than a flight to Japan).  They shipped my package out via DHL on Wednesday the 21st and I received it on Thursday the 22nd.

I'll be doing separate posts on all four sets and I'm going to start off with the BBM 30th Anniversary set that came out back in August.  This set celebrates 2020 being the 30th years that BBM has been publishing baseball cards.  It's a 252 card that was split into four subsets - OB players (108 cards), active players (108 cards), "Great Records & Highlights" (24 cards) and something that I think translates to "History of Masters" that features various managers (12 cards).  

The set is...ok.  I was kind of disappointed in it.  This is the third Anniversary set BBM has issued to celebrate themselves following the 20th Anniversary set in 2010 and the 25th Anniversary set in 2015.  It's much more like the 20th Anniversary set - same size, same four subsets - than the 25th Anniversary set though.  I'll mention my disappointments as I go through the subset.

The OB player subset features players who are either retired or are playing in MLB.  There are a number of players whose career started before BBM stared making cards in 1991 but still played the majority of their career afterwards like Norihiro Komada, Koji Akiyama, Masahiro Yamamoto, Masumi Kuwata and Kimiyasu Kudoh.  Other players who played their entire career since 1991 include Atsuya Furuta (ok, his rookie year was 1990), Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Takuro Ishii, Tomoaki Kanemoto and Kazuhiro Sasaki.  Seven of the nine Japanese players who played in MLB in 2020 are in the set - Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Kenta Maeda, Yoshihisa Hirano, Shohei Ohtani, Shogo Akiyama and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh (Yusei Kikuchi and Shun Yamaguchi are the two who aren't in the set).  Unlike the 20th Anniversary set, the 108 OB player cards are not split evenly among the 12 NPB teams (well, 13 if you include Kintetsu).  There are 14 Marines, 12 Baystars, 11 Hawks (both Daiei and Softbank), 10 each from Dragons, Carp and Giants, 9 from the Fighters, seven each from Tigers, Lions and Swallows, five from Orix (both BlueWave and Buffaloes), four from Kintetsu and only two from the Eagles.

One of my disappointments with the set is (as usual) who's not in the set.  As expected, Ichiro, Hideo Nomo, Hiromitsu Ochiai and Kazuhiro Kiyohara are not included.  I was surprised though that some other players who had been in the previous sets were not in this one, including Tsutomu Itoh, Norihiro Nakamura and Tsuyoshi Shinjyo.  The big group of players missing from this subset were the foreign players.  Tuffy Rhodes appeared in both of the previous sets and Bobby Rose and Ralph Bryant (among others) were in the 20th Anniversary set.  But the only gaijin appearing in the OB subset for this set was Alex Ramirez.  It may be that the travel restrictions caused by the pandemic caused BBM to omit the foreign players other than Ramirez because they weren't able to get materials to them to autograph (although it that were the case then why didn't they get Alonzo Powell who's been in Japan as a coach for the Dragons?).

The quality of the photos used in this subset is pretty good, an improvement over the somewhat grainy photos used on some of the cards in the 25th Anniversary set.  They're pretty heavy on "pitchers pitching, batters batting" poses on the photos though.  Here's a couple sample cards, two of which have more interesting photos than most:

#038

#047

#103

The 108 cards for active players are split up evenly between the 12 current NPB teams.  The nine players for each team aren't intended as a Best 9 for the team though.  The set includes several players who are fan favorites rather than players who are really contributing right now so Daisuke Matsuzaka, Seiichi Uchikawa and Kyuji Fujikawa are included.  Which is fine, really, since all three of those players had great seasons during BBM's 30 years.  Pretty much all the current superstars are in this subset including Yuki Yanagita, Seiya Suzuki, Tetsuya Yamada, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hayato Sakamoto, and Tomoya Mori.  There are a handful of foreign players, most of whom have been playing in NPB for a while like Brandon Laird, Jose Lopez, Dayan Viciedo, Wladimir Balentien, Neftali Soto and Kris Johnson although Adam Jones was also included.  As usual there are way too many "pitchers pitching, batters batting" photos although again there are a couple exceptions that I include in these samples:

#200

#149

#197

One of my other disappointments with the sets involves the backs of the cards.  The backs of the cards in the two previous sets featured a reproduction of the player's BBM rookie card (or first BBM card for the players whose career started prior to 1991).  Unfortunately BBM did not repeat that for this set.  Another oddity about the set involves the 2020 stats on the back of the active player cards.  Typically BBM's press date for a set is roughly two months before the set gets published.  As I mentioned, this set was published in late August which means it "went to bed" at the end of June so the stats on the back of the cards are only through June 30th.  In a normal year this wouldn't be an issue but since this year the season didn't start until June 19th the 2020 stats only cover about 10 games!  Here's the back of Yudai Ohno's card showing his two starts in June:

#129

Another of my disappointments with the set involves the "Great Records & Highlights" subset.  This subset features record setting events and highlights since 2010.  Why only since 2010 you ask?  Because it's a continuation of the 27 card "Great Records & Highlights" subset in the 2010 20th Anniversary set which covered the years from 1991 to 2010 (well from Hiromi Makihara's perfect game in 1994 - apparently nothing significant happened the previous three years).

I don't have a problem per se with BBM doing this - it's just that they had a nine card "great Records & Highlights" subset in the 2015 25 Anniversary set that also continued the 20th Anniversary set's subset for events from 2010 to 2015.   Not only are six of the nine events from the 2015 set included in this set but a couple of the photos appear to be either identical or practically identical.  Here are the cards from both sets celebrating Wladimir Balentien breaking Sadaharu Oh's single season home run record in 2013:

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #185 (left) & 2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #224 (right) 

Looks like it's just a recrop of the same photo.  Here are the cards celebrating Motonobu Tanishige breaking Katsuya Nomura's record for most NPB games appeared in:

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #188 (left) & 2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #229 (right)

It's not quite the same photo although it took me a minute to notice that Doala's not visible on the new card.

The other four events that are duplicated between the two sets are the Marines winning the 2010 Nippon Series, Alex Ramirez getting his 2000th hit in 2013, Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima getting the People's Honor Award in 2013 and Masahiro Tanaka going 24-0 in 2013.

On the plus side, the 18 events that the new set features include Masato Akamatsu's and Soichiro Amaya's fantastic catches a few weeks apart in Hiroshima, Motohiro Shima addressing the crowd at the Eagles first game after the earthquake in 2011, the Eagles winning the Nippon Series in 2013 (there's a lot of 2013 actually), pennant winners for the Hawks in 2014 and the Carp in 2016, Shogo Akiyama setting a new record for hits in a season in 2015, Seiya Suzuki hitting sayonara home runs on consecutive days against Orix in 2016, Shohei Ohtani hitting 165 kph with a pitch in 2016, Dennis Sarfate setting the single season saves record with 50 in 2017 and Tomoyuki Sugano no-hitting the Swallows in the 2018 Climax Series.  These are the only cards of Akamatsu, Amaya, Sarfate, Shima and Nagashima in the set.  My favorite card from the subset celebrates Yuki Yanagita and Tetsuto Yamada both getting the "triple three" in 2015 (that's 30 home runs, 30 stolen bases and a .300 average):

#231

The final subset is called something like "History Of Masters" and features 12 managers - Koji Akiyama, Tatsunori Hara, Senichi Hoshino, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Hideki Kuriyama, Mitsuru Manaka, Masataka Nashida, Norifumi Nishimura, Koichi Ogata, Sadaharu Oh, Hatsuhiko Tsuji and Hisanobu Watanabe.  (Ogata actually has three cards in the set as he has an OB player card and appears on the "Great Records & Highlights" card for the Carp's 2016 Central League pennant.)  All of these guys led their team(s) to at least one pennant and/or Nippon Series championship but it's kind of an odd collection of managers.  Most of these guys have managed in the past ten years - only Oh and Hoshino managed in the 90's.  Four of these managers (Hara, Hoshino, Nashida and Oh) also appeared in the "Great Field Managers" subset in the 20th Anniversary set.  It just seems a kind of random bunch of recent managers.  I guess I would have preferred them having more managers from the entire 30 range like Shigeo Nagashima (who was in the subset in the 20th Anniversary set), Hiromitsu Ochiai (same), Katuya Nomura or Bobby Valentine.  Here's Nashida's card:

#243

I guess I'm not sorry I bought the set but I do wish it had been a little better.  You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya as usual.  I will say that some of the more premium features of the set are kind of cool.  There are "secret" versions of 12 active player cards - instead of being a photo variant these are a "design" variant - the cards have the same photo but use the 1991 BBM set's design instead.  There are two insert sets that use the same design as previous BBM insert sets - one uses the 1998 "Dream Team" design while the other uses the 2002 "All Stars" design from the Touch The Game set.