Last Of The 2022 Sets

It's been a few weeks since the last time I listed all the newly announced sets so let's get caught up, shall we?

- Epoch's latest ultra high-end active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team set is for the Giants and will be out on November 26th.  Boxes of this will retail for 22,000 yen (~$160) and contain four, count 'em, four cards - although I think that two of those cards are guaranteed to be autograph or memorabilia cards.  The base set has 50 cards, all of which I think are serially numbered.  The set has the usual collection of insert cards that every "Stars & Legends" set has - "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 insert cards are serially numbered also.  There are four different types of autograph cards available - "Authentic" (26 different), "Legendary" (26 different), "1 of 1 Authentic" (15 different) and "Baseball" (10 different) - and six different types of bat related memorabilia cards - "Core", "Grip A", "Grip B", "Barrel", "Knob A" and "Knob B".  There are 10 different cards for each memorabilia card.  I assume all the autograph and memorabilia cards are serially numbered.

- On that same day Epoch will also be releasing the "Pacific League Premier Edition" set, another ultra high-end set.  Boxes of this will retail for 16,500 yen (~$120) and will contain six cards - again two of those cards are autograph/memorabilia cards.  The base set will contain 54 cards - 9 per team.  There are two different kinds of serially numbered insert cards - "Pacific League Superstars" (24 cards) and "Gem" (18 cards) - there are parallel versions for each set.  Everyone in the set has both an "authentic" and "holospectra" autograph card available and there are memorabilia cards featuring jerseys, patches and letters available.  There are also cards that feature both autographs and jerseys.

- BBM is changing things up a little bit with their own ultra high-end set.  Instead of being called "Glory" and being the first card set with a "cover date" of 2023, it's called "Glory Neo" and will be BBM's final set with a 2022 "cover date".  Boxes will retail for 22,000 yen and will contain six cards.  The base set will contain 36 cards which all have multiple serially numbered parallels.  There are two serially numbered insert sets - "Miyabi" (36 cards serially numbered to 50 with a parallel version) and "Glorious 3D" (12 cards serially numbered to 25).  There are a plethora of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The memorabilia cards include both patch cards and bat knob cards.  The set will be released at the end of this month.

- Topps is apparently not finished with NPB products for the year as they will be releasing a Bowman set on December 17th.  The base set will contain 180 cards which breaks down to 15 cards per team.  These 15 cards will be split between 12 "young players" and 3 "veteran players".  I'm really not sure how this is going to work because the farm team system in Japan just doesn't lend itself to the kind of deep prospect that the MLB version of Bowman would typically feature.  There just isn't the equivalent of some high draft pick playing in Single-A - the high draft picks in Japan are either on the top team or playing one level below it (because there's only one level in the minors).  And anyone entering NPB via the draft has already had a card in one of the Rookie Edition sets.  To me, there's only two interesting things Topps could do with this set - either include ikusei players (although the chances of any of them becoming even everyday top team players is pretty remote) or include players taken in last month's draft, beating BBM to the punch by a couple of months (but I have absolutely no faith that Topps could turn something around that quickly).  Each of the cards has a number of parallels, including a "Chrome" parallel that itself has multiple parallels.  There are two 24 card insert sets - "Bowman in 3D" and "Saikou (The Best)" - which both have a bunch of parallels.  Finally there are autograph cards available for "former professional baseball players (including active MLB players) who once excited the Japanese baseball world!!!".

- Topps also will be offering a Topps Now card for sale this week related to the Samurai Japan friendlies last week against Australia.  I don't really know anything more than that - not even sure if they're only doing one card.  Based on other things I see on their Japanese Topps Now page, I'm going to guess that the card will be 1,100 yen (about $8).  As I write this at about 9:30 PM Eastern US time on November 13th, the card or cards are not yet for sale.  I strongly suspect this will be a Japan only release.  I'm also assuming that this means Topps has now taken over the license to do Samurai Japan cards from Calbee.  UPDATE 11/15/22 - the cards went live today and there are eight of them.  They are not from the games against Australia though, they are from the warm up games the previous weekend.  There's four cards from the game on the fifth against the Fighters - Shugo Maki, Tomoya Mori, Munetaka Murakami and Taisei - and the other four are from the game on the sixth against the Giants - Tetsuto Yamada, Yasutaka Shimo, Murakami and Soichiro Yamazaki.  The cards are 1,100 yen apiece and there doesn't appear to be any package available for all eight - they'd have to be bought individually.  The good news is that it is possible to order these from the US!  The bad news is that shipping is 3900 yen, whether you buy one card or all eight.  I just bought all eight and it was 11,900 yen which works out to about $86 or just a little more than what eight Topps Now cards would have run me in the US.