Catching Up On New Releases

I wanted to do a quick round up on some recently announced sets - including one that's already out.

- The set that's already out is the Eagles 2nd Version set, the (obviously) second edition of the Eagles' annual team issued set.  The base set contains 84 cards which includes a card for every player on the team (both regular players and ikusei) as of the end of April.  Each of the cards has three facsimile signature parallels - silver, gold and red.  The gold ones are numbered to 24 and the red ones are 1-of-1.  There are three insert sets - "Stars Of Tohoku" (9 cards), "Hurler - Now & Future" (6 cards) and "Slugger - Now & Future" (6 cards).  The "Stars Of Tohoku" are serially numbered to 25 and both of the other insert sets have a parallel version.  There are memorabilia cards made from the bibs that the rookies wore during the "Joint Voluntary Training For New Players" back in January - there are 10 of these and each of them is numbered to 20.  There are also autographed cards for each of the 84 players - these are serially numbered but the total number for each card varies.  You can see the base set and some of the inserts and parallels over at Jambalaya.

- After being very secretive about their plans for Series One and Two earlier this year, Calbee's returned to their usual practice of announcing the checklist for their sets a month ahead of time for the Series Three set.  The base set will contain 88 cards - 72 player cards (six per team), 12 "Exciting Scene" cards (that I think will include cards for the pitchers of all four no-hitters thrown this season - Roki Sasaki, Nao Higashihama, Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto) and the usual four checklist cards.  There are the usual 24 "Star" insert cards available and another 12 "Reprint" insert cards to celebrate Calbee's 50th Anniversary.  The "Reprint" cards feature an OB player from each of the 12 NPB teams.  There's also a 12 card "Team Home Run King" box set available from Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The set will be out in mid-September.

- BBM's second of their two annual "Dancing Heroine" sets - "Mai" - will be also be out in mid-September.  This 87 card set features members of the cheerleading squads and dance teams for the Swallows, Tigers, Giants, Dragons, Marines, Eagles, Hawks, Fighters and Lions.  There are parallel versions of the base set cards and randomly inserted autographed cards.  None of the women included in this set were in the earlier ("Hana") set.

- The second of Epoch's ultra-high end combination active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team sets this year will be for the Carp and will hit the stores on October 8th.  Boxes containing four cards will sell for 18,700 yen (~$140) - I believe one of the cards is guaranteed to be an autograph.  The base set will contain 50 cards and there will be five insert sets - "Decomori Signature  (Gold)" (six cards), "Decomori Signature (Green)" (six cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram)" (six cards), "Gem" (six cards), and "Black Gem" (six cards).  All the base and insert cards are serially numbered but I don't know how many for each.  There's also five different types of autograph cards - "Authentic", "Star", "Legendary",  and "Rookie".