Size: 313 cards (cards numbered 337-600, the 13 cards of "Ceremonial First Pitch History" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP13 and 36 cards for "Cross Blossom" subset are separately numbered CB37-CB72)
Cards Per Team: 16 (team card + 15 players)
Team Card Theme: Early Season Candids
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch History (13), Cross Blossom (36), Proud Ace (12), Big Archist (12), Ground Master (12)
Inserts: Breaking Now (12), Soul Of Team (12), Phantom (24, #'d to 25)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Okugawa, both of which are #'d to 200 along with patch versions that are #'d to 20 each. There's also a combination jersey card featuring both Sasaki and Okugawa which is #'d to 15 along with a patch version of the combination card that is #'d to 5. There are autographed cards for players that use a landscape version of the "Cross Blossom" cards that have print runs between 10 and 30 cards and other autograph cards that are #'d to 5. There are also autographed "buy back" cards of Daisuke Matsuzaka. Tsuyoshi Wada, Haruki Nishikawa and Ryoichi Adachi. There are autographed versions of six of the "Ceremonial First Pitch History" cards with print runs between 15 and 35 with a silver parallel autographed version that are #'d to 5.
Parallels: 12 cards (one per team) have a "Secret" version which is a short printed photo variation. 12 other cards (also one per team) have an "Ultra Secret" version which is an even shorter printed photo variation. 70-ish of the player cards have four different facsimile autograph parallels - silver (unnumbered), gold (#'d to 100), hologram (#'d to 50), and red (#'d to 25) . Each "Cross Blossom" card has two parallels - one that's #'d to 100 and a "1 of 1" version. There are four different parallels for the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards - silver (#'d to 200), gold (#'d to 100), silver holo (#'d to 50) and gold holo (#'d to 25). The "Breaking Now" inserts have three parallel versions that are numbered to 150, 100 and 50 respectively while the "Soul Of Team" cards have one parallel numbered to 100.
Notable Rookies: None
BBM tweaked their 2nd Version set a little bit this year. While the base set was roughly the same size as it has been for the past five years or so (300 cards plus however many "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards) the arrangement of the cards is different. All the 2nd Version sets since 2015 have only had three subsets - the "1st Version Update", the "Ceremonial First Pitch" and the "Cross Something" cards - but this one has three 12 subsets - "Proud Ace", "Big Archist" and "Ground Master". To account for the three subsets the number "regular" player cards in the set dropped from 216 (18 per team) to 180 (15 per team), the lowest amount since the 2009 edition of the set.
About the "regular" player cards...I was hoping that BBM would continuing having a more diverse selection of photos like they did in the this year's 1st Version set. They slid back to having more "batters batting, pitchers pitching" poses in this set although there's still some good photos. Here's a bunch of examples:
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| #480 |
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| #519 |
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| #381 |
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| #449 |
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| #505 |
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| #538 |
I felt that Jason Bour's card had the perfect 2020 photo on it - no fans in the stands and the guys in the dugout in the background are wearing masks:
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| #504 |
I did notice one of my perennial complaints with the set - having a photo of a player that is very similar to the phoot on the player's 1st Version card. Here's an example with Koyo Aoyagi:
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| 1st Version #223 (top), 2nd Version #496 (bottom) |
Here's what the back of the cards look like - pretty much the standard 2nd Version back. The stats are through the end of June so they only cover the first ten or so games of the season.
Usually there's somewhere between 20 and 40 guys on the "regular" player cards who didn't appear in 1st Version. This year there's only 17. There's several foreign players - Rick Vanden Hurk of the Hawks, Albert Suarez of the Swallows, Nick Martinez of the Fighters and Andrew Albers of the Buffaloes - along with guys who I guess had a bigger role for their team than BBM was expecting like Kazunari Ishii of the Fighters and Ginjiro Sumitani and Naoki Yoshikawa of the Giants. There's also a card of Daiki Masuda, the Giants' pinch running (and occasional pitching) specialist - this is his first ever BBM "flagship" card although his rookie card would be in the 2016 BBM Rookie Edition set.
As usual I have no idea why BBM chose to have some players who didn't appear in 1st Version have "regular" player cards in this set while they had others appear in the "1st Version Update" subset. At least this year there are no players who appear in both. The subset includes a number of big-ish names like Kazuki Yoshimi, Nao Higashihama, Atsushi Nohmi, Shota Dohbayashi, T-Okada, Tomotaka Sakaguchi, Takayuki Kajitani and Hiroyuki Nakajima. Takeshi Toritani has his first flagship card with the Marines in this subset after signing with them back in March. This subset also includes a couple former ikusei players who were registered to the 70 man roster this year including Koshiro Wada of the Marines, Ariel Martinez of the Dragons and Yuto Takahama of the Fighters.
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| #354 |
There's one player in the subset who also had a card in the 1st Version set - Zelous Wheeler who was traded from the Eagles to the Giants in late June. His 1st Version card shows him with the Eagles and his 2nd Version card has him with the Giants.
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| 1st Version #070 (left), 2nd Version #357 (right) |
For the second year in a row BBM went a team checklist photo theme that was not mascots which I heartily applaud. I would loosely define the theme as "early season highlights". There are several on-field celebrations plus a couple milestones like the Giants' 6000th win. There are a couple cards that like the Bour card are quintessential 2020 photos - there's several photos of mascots by themselves in empty stands and the Tigers card shows an empty Koshien Stadium while a game is going on.
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| #592 |
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| #593 |
Each of three 12 card subsets feature one player from each NPB team. As you've probably guessed, the "Proud Ace" subset is a top starting pitcher from each team.
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| #563 |
I'm not sure what a "Big Archist" is supposed to be but the subset includes a slugger from each team:
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| #572 |
The "Ground Master" subset includes a veteran from each team. This subset includes several players who didn't have cards in the rest of the set including Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks, Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Lions and Takayuki Kishi of the Eagles.
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| #578 |
As expected the set includes the second half of the "Cross Blossom" cross set subset that started in 1st Version. There's 36 cards numbered #CB37 to #CB72.
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| #CB50 |
BBM's been including a subset showing celebrities throwing out first pitches at games in their 2nd Version set ever since 2004. They had a bit of a challenge this year since the season didn't start until late June and crowds weren't allowed for a few weeks after that so there really weren't any celebrity first pitch ceremonies to commemorate before the set went to press. What they did was tie into their 30th Anniversary and did a subset called "Ceremonial First Pitch History" that highlighted first pitch ceremonies over those 30 years. The 13 cards are actually pretty heavily weighted towards more recent events as there's only two cards from the 1990's and three cards from the 2000's. I'm fairly certain that none of the celebrities has appeared in any of the other First Pitch subsets. Over half of the celebrities are actresses - Naoko Iijima, Ryoko Hirosue, Saki Aibu, Saki Fukuda, Ikumi Hisamatsu, Chiaki Kuriyama, and Erika Toda. There are also two actors (Show Aikawa and Toshiro Yanagida), a figure skater (Miki Ando), a wrestler (Saori Yoshida), a singer (Jurina Matsui) and a musician (Koji Kikkawa).
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| #FP07 |
As usual you can see all the cards (including the inserts, "secret" versions and some of the parallels) over at Jambalaya.
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