The End Is Near

The end of 2020 is fast approaching but there are a couple more sets for the year that have been announced recently.  

- SCC is releasing their latest KBO set - their fourth of 2020 - today I think.  It's called "Golden Premium Collection" and, according to this tweet from Dan, a box of it will run you 100,000 won or about $90.50.  Not sure about the details of the set but it looks like each box contains one autograph and one memorabilia card.  I'm sure Dan will eventually post the checklist for the set over at Trading Card DB.

- For the fourth time in the last five years Calbee is issuing a Samurai Japan set.  According to the checklist it has a 27 card base set (26 players plus manager Atsunori Inaba) and there's a 10 card "Starting Lineup" insert set as well.  This set is pretty much last year's Premier 12 roster - the only two players who are missing are Shun Yamaguchi who played ML this past year and Yoshihiro Maru who replaced Shogo Akiyama (who also played MLB this past year) on the roster.  Not sure why Maru wasn't included as there's a number of pitchers included in the set who replaced other pitchers on the original roster due to injury (Hiroshi Kaino, Kan Ohtake, and Shinya Kayama).  The set will be available in convenience stores starting on Monday, November 30th and card shops by December 14th (I think).

- Epoch's latest announcement is for another ultra high-end set with the OB Club called "Holografica".  Boxes of the set will retail for 16,500 yen (about $160) and will contain six cards total.  I'm not positive but I assume each box is guaranteed to contain an autograph card (if not two).  The set has a 44 card base set featuring such retired players as Shigeo Nagashima, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Isao Harimoto, Hideki Kuroda, Tsutomo Wakamatsu and Tomoaki Kanemoto.  Each base set card has a photo variant and both the regular card and photo variant have some sort of parallel issue.  There are five different varieties of autographed cards available - "Authentic Signature", "Tribute To The Past", "Baseball Greats", "Baseball Signatures" and "Baseball Signatures (Sweet Spot)".  I think the last two are signatures on pieces of actual baseballs.  The parallels and the autographed cards are all serially numbered although I don't know what the counts are.  There are parallel versions of the "Authentic Signature", "Tribute To The Past" and "Baseball Greats" autographed cards.  The set will be released on December 19th.

- BBM has announced the first set that will have a "cover date" of 2021.  It's "Glory", their annual ultra high-end set.  Each six card box retails for 18,000 yen or $173 and is guaranteed to include "two or more premium inserts including one or more autographs".  The base set has 36 cards of active players - I'm assuming six cards per team but I don't know that for sure.  There's a parallel version of each base card that I think is limited to 5 each.  There are two insert sets - "MIYABI" which has 36 cards (I assume the same 36 players as the base set) and "Glorious 3D" which has 12.  The "MIYABI" cards are numbered to 50 and there's a "purple foil" parallel version numbered to 5 each available while the "Glorious 3D" cards are numbered to 25.  There are a wide variety of memorabilia cards including jersey, "super patch" and "grip end".  There are also memorabilia cards featuring jersey swatches from two, three or four players.  Besides the normal, one player autograph cards there are also autograph cards featuring two players.  The set will be out in late December.

In a normal year I would expect BBM to have announced a couple of their annual sets for 2021 by now, including the "Time Travel" and "Shining Venus" sets but so far there's been nothing about them.  I don't know if that means anything although to be fair, the "Glory" announcement only came out about a week ago so maybe there'll be announcements in the next week or so.  (It frequently feels like BBM makes announcements right after I do one of these posts so we'll see what happens...)