...for any new 2021 sets to be announced. Hard to believe but 2022 is just over two months away. There are a number of sets that have recently been announced that will be released over the next two months - this does NOT include any sets from Topps. It's been three and a half weeks now since their big announcement that they had signed a licensing deal with NPB and would be issuing "several products" in Japan in the fourth quarter of this year but there've been no further announcements since then. The only remaining sets that I'm still expecting to be released this year are another ultra high-end collaboration between Epoch and the OB Club and a Samurai Japan set (featuring the Gold Medal winning Olympic team) from Calbee.
- BBM has announced the latest set under the "History" label, their recent line of OB team sets. The new one is for Orix and is the fourth "History" set in as many months, following the Dragons set in August, the Marines set in September and the Tigers set this past week. The full name of the set is "Orix Buffaloes History 1936-2021". Like the previous "History" sets, it features a 90 card base set that's split up into 7 "History" cards, 71 cards of OB players and 12 cards of active players. There's a 12 card "Legend Of Heroes" insert set, a nine card "Team Record" insert set and a 24 card serially numbered "Phantom" insert set along with a bunch of autographed cards. Unlike the Marines set, it looks like this set will acknowledge that the team had previous ownership as there's a lot of sample cards showing players in Hankyu uniforms (Orix bought the team from Hankyu following the 1988 season). The OB players shown on the sample cards include So Taguchi, Yoshitomo Tani, Hisashi Yamada and Boomer Wells but do not include Ichiro Suzuki. The set will be out in late November.
- Also coming out in late November is a set featuring both OB and active players called "Rookie Legend". The base set contains 90 cards and it looks like they're all player cards - there's no subsets listed on the website. The set commemorates players who had great rookie seasons and will include OB players like Shigeo Nagashima, Koichi Tabuchi, Koji Yamamoto, Hideki Matsui and Koji Uehara and active players like Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Shugo Maki and Teruaki Satoh. The website doesn't have a lot of details about the insert cards but there apparently will be a nine card one with an unrevealed theme along with the 12 serially numbered "Phantom" cards. There will also be foil facsimile autograph inserts along with actual autographed cards. The cynic in me figures this is a chance for BBM to grind out yet another Teruaki Satoh card and another batch of autographs from players from the 1970's and 80's but I'll probably buy it anyway.
- BBM is celebrating Daisuke Matsuzaka's career with a box set entitled "Heisei no Kaibutsu" or "the Heisei Monster". Each box will contain the 18 card base set plus a currently unspecified number of "special" cards that could be 3D card, a memorabilia card or an autographed cards. The set will be released in mid-December.
- BBM's likely final release for 2021 is the Fusion set, their annual combination Update and Season Summary set. As usual the base set has four parts and as usual BBM hasn't released how large one of those parts will be so it's impossible to say how big the set will be (although we know it's at least 144 cards). There's a 21 card "1st Version Update" subset, a 24 card "Leader" subset (featuring the statistical leaders for each league in 12 categories - the "Stolen Bases" for the PL card is going to be crowded because four guys tied for the crown), a the 99 card "Record Hall Of Fame" subset which despite the misleading name features cards highlighting feats by active players in 2021 and the related feats of OB players in the past, and the unspecified sized "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards that will be a continuation of the subset in the 2nd Version set. The set has Fusion's standard non-premium insert sets - the 24 card "Great Records" set featuring two players from each team who achieved some milestone in 2021 and the 12 card "Legendary Player" set featuring an OB player from each team. Additionally there are two premium insert sets - "Esperanza" which features serially numbered cards of 24 active players (2 per team) and the now ubiquitous "Phantom" set which features serially numbered cards of 12 OB players (one per team). There's also the usual batch of autographed cards available. The set hits the stores in mid-December.
- Epoch is releasing three more sets in their combination active/OB player team sets called "Stars & Legends". These three are for the Dragons (out on November 20th), Buffaloes (November 27th) and Eagles (December 4th) and bring the total number of "Stars & Legends" sets for 2021 to eleven - or everyone but the Marines. Each box for the sets will retail for 16,500 yen ($150) and will contain four cards (and I think at least one of those is an autograph). The Dragons base set has 48 cards, the Buffaloes base set has 60 cards and the Eagles base set has 34 cards. I think the Dragons' base cards are serially numbered. Each set features the same five insert sets - "Decomori Signature Black Vision (Gold)" (three cards each numbered to 15), "Decomori Signature Black Vision (Green)" (three cards each numbered to 5), "Decomori Signature Black Vision (Hologram)" (three 1-of-1 cards), "Gem" (six cards numbered to 15), and "Black Gem" (six cards also numbered to 15). There's a number of different types of autograph cards available in each set including multi-player ones in the Eagles set. The Buffaloes set DOES include Ichiro - I wonder if he has signed some sort of exclusive deal with Epoch as he's been in a number of their sets in the past two years (including the insanely expensive and exclusive "#51 Ichiro Suzuki - ORIX BlueWave Super Luxury Baseball Card Collection" set) and not been in any BBM sets.
- On November 20th Epoch is also releasing their "Pacific League Premier Edition" set. This is another ultra-high end set with a six card box going for 16,500 yen. There are 54 cards in the base set - 9 per team - and two insert sets - the 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" set and the 18 card "Gem" set. Both insert sets have parallels. Additionally there are three types of autograph cards and three types of memorabilia cards available. The six cards in each box consist of three base set cards, one insert card and two autograph or memorabilia cards.
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