Oldest BBM Set With An Active NPB Player - 2022 Edition

A couple years back I got curious about what was the oldest BBM set that included at least one active NPB player.  I was kind of surprised to discover that it was the 1998 set with Ryota Igarashi being the active player.  When Igarashi retired after the 2020 season the 1999 set became the oldest set with Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kosuke Fukudome as the active players.  Matsuzaka retired at the end of last season but Fukudome's still going strong - he was batting third in the starting lineup for the Dragons on Opening Day last Friday - so it's still the 1999 set.  This makes Fukudome the final player who was active in the 20th Century.

1999 BBM #310

My collection of Calbee cards isn't anywhere near complete enough to figure this out every year but since Fukudome was a rookie in 1999 and he has cards in the 1999 Calbee set, the 1999 Calbee set is the oldest one with an active player:

1999 Calbee #079

Looking back, the 1991 set was the earliest BBM set that included an active NPB player from 1991 to 2015.  After Motonobu Tanishige, Masahiro Yamamoto and Satoshi Nakajima retired, the 1994 set (with Kazuo Matsui, Daisuke Miura and Kazuya Fukuura) became the oldest (or 1993 if you want to count Ichiro who was still playing in MLB through the start of the 2019 season).  Once Fukuura retired after 2019 it became 1998 and Igarashi.

Once Fukudome retires, the next possible candidate is the 2001 set which features Seichi Uchikawa and Hiroyuki Nakajima.