Last 2020 Sets?

 BBM has recently announced what I expect will be there final three sets of the year - or at least the final three sets that will say "2020" on them.  All three are sets that BBM publishes every year (or at least have for the last couple years).

- BBM will release the "Rookie Edition Premium" set in late November.  This will be a box set containing 38 cards - a 36 card base set plus two premium cards.  The 36 cards in the base set break down to three "rookies" per team (where "rookie" in this case means 2019 draftees).  The two premium cards can be autograph or memorabilia cards.  I don't know if the sets are guaranteed to include autographed cards or not although BBM does advertise "hot boxes" that feature two autograph cards.  There's only 3200 boxes being made and they retail for 15,000 yen (around $142).

- BBM's "Infinity" set will be out in early December.  This is a pack based set including athletes from a variety of sports although the bulk of them are baseball players.  There's 27 baseball players listed on the website - all of whom are retired except for Daisuke Matsuzaka.  There are also athletes listed from boxing, soccer, softball, swimming, judo, badminton, gymnastics, volleyball, table tennis, weightlifting, taekwondo, sailing, shooting and "athletics" (which I'm taking to be "track and field").  BBM was apparently still working on the roster of athletes for the set so I can't tell you how large the set is.  There will be some sort of insert cards available and possible autograph cards.

- BBM's last set for 2020 will be the "Fusion" set.  This is essentially their 2020 season in review set.  It has four parts.  The first part is a 24 card "1st Version Update" featuring players who for whatever reason didn't appear in either the "1st Version" set or the "1st Version Update" subset of the "2nd Version" set (for example I'd expect Wei-Yen Chen to appear in this subset).  In the past this subset has not been evenly split between the 12 teams but the fact that it's 24 cards makes me suspicious (24 cards is the largest this subset has ever been).  The second part is the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  In the past this has been an extension of the equivalent subset in the "2nd Version" set.  I'm not sure if that's the case this year since the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards in this year's "2nd Version" set featured first pitches from previous years while I think the ones from "Fusion" will be from this season.  BBM has not announced how many cards will be in this subset.  The third part is the bulk of the set - the 99 card "Record Hall Of Fame" subset that has a very misleading name.  These are essentially the "regular" player cards for the set and are a combination of active and OB players.  The active player cards all highlight some event or record that the player did while the OB player cards have some angle on those events or records (and after five years of BBM doing this set I still can't really explain it).  12 of these cards will have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variants.  The final part of the set is the 24 card "Title Holders" subset.  This subset celebrates the statistical leaders from the 2020 season.  There is one card for each of 12 statistical categories for each league - if two players tie for a particular category then the card shows both of them.  The subset will not include the award winners like MVP or Rookie Of Year since those awards are announced after the set goes to press.  There are four insert sets.  Two of these are the standard Fusion insert sets - a 24 card "Great Record" set which shows two active players from each team celebrating a milestone and a 12 card "Legendary Player" set which features an OB player from each team.  The other two are the premium inserts of "Phantom" and "Esperanza".  The 12 "Phantom" cards are serially numbered and feature one OB player from each team.  I also assume the the 24 "Esperanza" cards are also serially numbered and feature two active players from each team.  There will also be autographed cards randomly inserted into packs.  The set will be out in mid-December.

- Epoch had announced a ridiculously high end set for Ichiro last spring that ended up getting delayed due to the pandemic.  They recently announced that the "#51 Ichiro Suzuki - ORIX BlueWave Super Luxury Baseball Card Collection" will finally be released on October 31.  I still don't know much in the way of details but I think there's only 250 boxes being produced.  Really all I know is that it won't be cheap.