2020 In Review - Calbee

Of the three major card manufacturers in Japan, Calbee's releases were probably the ones that were least affected by the pandemic in 2020.  As usual the company issued their flagship set in their standard three separate Series.

Series One was released in mid-March.  It had an 88 card base set containing 72 player cards, nine "The Record" cards, three cards for the 2019 post-season and four checklist cards.  In addition there were two insert sets (8 "Legend" cards for 2019 retirees and 20 "Title Holder" cards) and a limited edition 12 card box set called "Sluggers" that was only available from Calbee's Amazon Japan store (I have mistakenly thought in the past that these limited edition box sets were prizes that could be redeemed with "Lucky" cards).

Series Two came out in early July, a little later than normal.  It had a base set of 87 cards - 72 player cards, 12 "AVG Leader" cards and just three checklist cards (normally the Series Two checklist cards show early season highlights but because the start of the season was delayed three months there weren't any highlights to show.  Calbee instead did cards of the three new managers.)  The set also had a 24 card "Star" insert set and a limited edition 12 card box set called "WINS Leader".

Like Series Two, Series Three was delayed a couple of weeks, coming out in early October instead of mid-September.  It had a base set of 89 cards - 72 player cards, 12 "First Win" cards and FIVE checklist cards (making up for the missing checklist card from Series Two and ensuring that the set has its standard 12 checklist cards).  Also like Series Two, this Series had 24 "Star" insert cards.  The associated limited edition box set featured the Opening Day cleanup hitters for each team.

There were a total of 216 player cards included in all three Series which works out to 18 per team.  As usual there are a number of players who had more than one card - 33 in fact which is the highest number in the past few years.  As a result there are only 183 unique players represented in those 216 player cards.  Also as usual there are a number of stars who don't have player cards but appear in subsets such as Hayato Sakamoto (only in the "AVG Leader" subset), Tomoya Mori ("AVG Leader"), Seiya Suzuki ("AVG Leader"), Kensuke Kondoh ("AVG Leader") and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ("First Win").  Why Calbee includes multiple cards of some players while excluding others is always puzzling.

Calbee also issued a set for the Samurai Japan team in late November.  This 37 card set featured most of the Japanese players from the 2019 Premier 12, the last international baseball tournament held before the pandemic hit.