Epoch's 2020 card releases don't appear to have been affected much by COVID-19. They issued 25 sets this past year which is two fewer than the 27 they did in both 2018 and 2019 but you'd be hard-pressed to pick a particular set that didn't get made this year because of the pandemic. As usual Epoch's offerings were split between reasonably priced ones and ultra high end ones.
We'll start with the reasonably priced sets. For the third year in a row Epoch released a "flagship" set called "NPB". The only real change with this set this past year was the inclusion of 12 cards of OB players which caused the base set to grow from 432 cards to 444 cards. In addition, Epoch issued "Rookies & Stars" sets for nine of the twelve NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers - which was one more than they had done in 2019 (they added the Hawks). The big difference this year is that instead of being "comprehensive" team sets (i.e. including all the players on the team's 70 man roster) these team sets only had 36 cards each so only a subset of the team's players were included. The final reasonably priced set was the Pacific League Rookies set, a box set featuring all of the 2019 draft picks (except for the ikusei picks) for the six Pacific League teams. This is the third straight year that Epoch has issued this set.
Getting into the more expensive sets...Epoch issued eight combination active/OB player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" title. They did them for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers (or all the teams they did "Rookies & Stars" sets for). Epoch also issued a set celebrating the Tigers' 85th Anniversary called "The Legendary Players" that I believe only included OB players.
For the fifth year in a row Epoch issued a set called "Pacific League Premier Edition" that featured active players from the six Pacific League teams. They also issued their usual two sets in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) - aka the OB Club. This year's offerings were "Career Achievements" and "Holographica".
Epoch also issued an extremely high end set dedicated to Ichiro Suzuki called "Ichiro Suzuki - Orix BlueWave Super Luxury". I was never able to find a price on boxes for this set but there were only 250 produced. This is the one set that was affected by the pandemic - it was originally scheduled to be released at the beginning of May but it ended up not being published until the end of October.
In addition to their sets Epoch also issued their on-demand Epoch One cards for the third year in a row. As was the case last year, Epoch issued these cards for only nine of the twelve NPB teams (which oddly enough are not the same nine teams they issued the "Rookies & Stars" and "Stars & Legends" sets for) although the lineup changed with the Baystars replacing the Carp while still including the Dragons, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers. There were a total of 676 cards issued which is the fewest number for the three years they've been doing these cards which is probably related to the shortened season. Although I will point out that it's very odd that they didn't issue any cards for the Nippon Series at all.
2 comments:
Would love to land one of those Ichiro sets. Man, I keep saying it hoping it will come true, but would love Epoch to get into the sumo wrestling card game. Thanks for the rundown!
That Ichiro set is insane. There's 20 cards in the base set and each card is numbered to 20. All the parallel and autographed cards have print runs of less than that. Just took a quick look on Yahoo! Japan Auctions. An unopened box (which contains four cards) is going for 300,000 yen ($3000). Base set cards are going for around 20,000 yen ($200) and the autographed cards are around 170,000 yen ($1700).
Weird that the only other sports Epoch does cards for are soccer, horse racing and women's golf.
Post a Comment