It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year for everyone and that includes baseball card companies. BBM rose to the challenge and managed to pretty much produced their standard slate of sets although with a delayed schedule.
BBM issued 29 sets this past "year" - as always I'm referring to sets with the "cover date" of 2020 on the cards which this time around started with a set issued in December of 2019 and ended with a set released just over a week ago. 29 is the fewest number of sets that BBM has done in a year since 2006 when they did just 26. That's not necessarily due to the pandemic, however, as the number of baseball card sets that BBM's been doing has been slowly declining from the 50(!) they did in 2013 and 29 is only slightly less than the 32 they did in both 2018 and 2019.
BBM published all 25 of their perennial sets this year although a number of them were delayed for a month or two. Things pretty much were on schedule for the first half of the year - the historic set Time Travel 1985 and the ultra high end set Glory came out in December as expected, followed by the "Retirement" set in January, the Rookie Edition set in February, the Icons set (called "Fireballers" this year) in March and the 1st Version set in April. The 12 "comprehensive" team sets came out in their usual time period between March and July. However since the start of the season got delayed for three months, the remaining products from BBM also ended up getting delayed. The two cheerleader/dance team sets - Dancing Heroine Hana and Mai - which normally come out in June and July respectively came out in September and October instead. The 2nd Version set was delayed two months from August to October. There were one month delays for the high end set Genesis (September to October), the Rookie Edition Premium box set (October to November) and the Fusion set (November to late December) and a two month delay for the multi-sport set Infinity (October to December).
The big drop off in sets from BBM were in the single team box sets category. Instead of the five sets they did in each of the last two years, they one did one this year - a set for the Swallows called Legacy.
The remaining three sets from 2020 had a historic flavor. There were two similar looking OB team sets - Carp History 1950-2020 and Giants History 1934-2020. These were very attractive sets and I wonder if BBM will be doing similar sets for other teams in the future. BBM also issued a set to commemorate their 30th Anniversary of doing baseball cards.
I'm curious about what 2021 will hold for BBM. Their first set with a 2021 cover date (Glory) came out a few weeks ago but the only other set that's been announced so far is Rookie Edition. Not only has their been no announcement about the annual Time Travel set, that set is usually out by now. In addition, so far there's been no mention of the annual "Retirement" and "Shining Venus"* sets which usually come out in January. Not sure if this means BBM won't be doing the sets or if it simply means they're slow in announcing them.
*Shining Venus is a multi-sport set featuring female athletes. It usually includes one or two players from the Japan Women's Baseball League which makes it of interest to me but I don't list it as one of BBM's annual 25 baseball card sets.
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