There's been a bevy of new set announcements over the past few weeks, most of which are team sets. Here's a quick round up of them:
- BBM has announced four more of their annual "comprehensive" team sets for 2021 - these are for the Lions, the Carp, the Baystars and the Giants. The base sets for each one contains the standard 81 cards. Each one also has at least two premium serially numbered insert sets associated with it - "Phantom" (15 cards each for the Lions and Baystars; 18 cards each for the Carp and Giants) and "Esperanza" (15 cards for each set). The Lions set has 68 cards for the manager and players along with four subsets - "L's Pedigree" (five cards), "Powerhouse" (three cards), "Cannon Ball" (three cards) and "Road To 2000" (two cards - I assume for Takumi Kuriyama and Takeya Nakamura). It also has three insert sets (other than the premium ones) - "High Road" (nine cards), "Evolver" (six cards), and "Heritage" (three cards). The Carp set will have 69 cards for the players and manager plus a four card "Newcomer" subset and a eight card "Stats Leaders" one. There are also three non-premium insert sets that are only generically defined on the website - a nine card "main players" one, a four card "pinch hitter" one and a five card "pitchers you can rely on" one. The set also has another premium set called something like "Hyakka Ryoran" which has 24 cards that are each serially numbered to 50. The Baystars base set is split into 66 cards for the manager and players, six "Destiny" cards, four "Flagship" cards and five "Advance" cards. It will also have three non-premium insert sets - "Navigator" (nine cards), "Rising Tide" (six cards) and "Artisan" (three cards). The Giants set has only 62 cards for the manager and players (27 of which have a foil facsimile autograph parallel version) along with one card for the mascots, a three card "Join The Team" subset, a seven card "Endeavor" subset, a four card "Good Competitor" subset and a four card "Overpowering Bats" subset. The Giants set always has a bunch of associated insert sets and this year is no exception. It has (*deep breath*) a nine card "Greatest Of Giants" set, a three card "Next Break" set, a three card "Iron Wall" set, a three card "Giants Succession" set, a 15 card "Cross Foil Signing" set, a two card "Combo Cross Foil Signing" set, a "Triple Cross Foil Signing" card, a three card "Triple X 2021" set (3D card I think) and a nine card "Super Metallic Giants" set (metal cards limited to the uniform number of the subject - so there are only six cards for Hayato Sakamoto, 18 cards for Tomoyuki Sugano, etc). Add them all up and there's 81 total insert cards - same number of cards as in the base set. I think that the "Foil Signing" cards are facsimile signatures simply because BBM didn't list them with the "special insert cards" but I could be mistaken. The Lions, Carp and Baystars sets all have a variety of autograph cards available while the Carp set also has jersey cards. The Giants set appears to only have bat relic cards available. The Lions set will be out in late April, the Carp and Baystars sets will be out in mid-May and the Giants set will be out in late May.
- Epoch has announced three more of their "Rookies & Stars" team sets - the Tigers, the Lions and the Hawks. I haven't seen the details on the Hawks set yet but I'm pretty confident that they are the same as the those for the other two sets. Each of these sets has a base set of 36 cards, each of which has a parallel hologram version. There are 12 different insert sets for each set as well. There are four "Regular Printed Signature" sets ("Silver", "Gold", "Hologram" & "Variation Hologram") - there are 9 "Variation Hologram" cards and 18 each for the other three sets. There are three 18 card "Metal Power" insert sets: "Silver", "Gold" (serially numbered to 50) and "Hologram" (serially numbered to 10) and three six card "Time To Shine Hologram" sets: "A" (serially numbered to 50), "B" (serially numbered to 15) and "C" (serially numbered to 5). Finally there 6 "Gem" insert cards (each serially numbered to 15) and 6 "Black Gem" insert cards (each serially numbered to 5). There are also four different types of autograph cards available - "Authentic" (looks like everyone in the base set has this type of autographed card), "Authentic 1-of-1" (again it looks like everyone in the set has literally one of these), "Rookie" and "Star" (there's a different number of these per team). The Tigers set comes out on May 1st, the Lions set on May 15th and the Hawks set on May 22nd.
- Hits (or TIC or whatever) has announced a pair of their "Game Used Ball" team sets - the Swallows and the Baystars. While these are from the same folks that do the "mini colored paper" sets of oversized cards, the sets contain standard sized cards. Each set has a base set of 81 cards but only include a subset of the players on the team - 15 for the Swallows and 16 for the Baystars. Each set also includes "special" (i.e. insert) cards although there's no description of what they are. Both sets also have "rare" cards like raw photographs, autographs and (of course) game used ball relics. It looks like each player in the set has autographed cards available and the Baystars set also features autographed cards of manager Daisuke Miura who is not in the base set. The Swallows set hits the stores on May 22 followed by the Baystars set on June 5th.
- The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles are selling "Eagles Masahiro Tanaka Chips" at their ballpark this year. You can buy a bag of potato chips for 450 yen ($4.50) that includes one of 18 cards of Masahiro Tanaka. The first nine cards of the set feature highlights from Tanaka's career in Japan while the final nine cards show random photos of him on the field. These are pretty pricey at the moment. I've seen some auctions on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for them and the starting prices have been either 500 yen or 999 yen although I don't know if they've been selling or not.
- Lastly, Epoch One has returned for the fourth year. As I've described them before, Epoch One is essentially the Japanese version of Topps Now - cards that are offered online for a limited time and have print runs limited to the number of cards that get ordered. The main differences is the price (500 yen vs $9.99), the time the cards are available (three days vs 24 hours) and the fact that only a subset of the teams participate. This year there will again be nine teams that the cards are produced for - the Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers. This will be the first time the Eagles will have Epoch One cards but the Baystars have dropped out after one year. In addition Epoch is doing two special versions of the cards although I'm not sure I fully understand what they're doing. There's a "Holospectra" version of some of the cards that will sell for 3000 yen. These will be serially numbered to only 10. (They've done this for three years but I haven't really paid too much attention to it before now.) There is also going to be a "Signature Team" edition that will be released probably after the season. There will be a 12 to 14 card team set available for 30,000 yen that will contain 10 to 12 printed signature cards plus two "authentic" signatures. The sets will be serially numbered to some low print run (the ones from last year were between 25 and 60). The Carp haven't had "regular" Epoch One cards since 2019 but apparently there are plans for them to have one of these "Signature Team" editions this year. For both the "Holospectra" and "Signature Team" issues Epoch urges you to "Please refrain from purchasing for resale." I kind of suspect that that won't keep shops and collectors from flipping them.
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