2022 Epoch Lions Premier Edition

The other part of my latest order from Suruga-ya that I want to talk about is the 2022 Epoch Lions Premier Edition set.   

Epoch started issuing team sets under the "Rookies & Stars" label in 2018 - these were "comprehensive" team sets the first two years (i.e. they contained cards for all the players on the team's 70 man roster) but they only had 36 cards each in 2020 and 2021.  They changed the label to "Premier Edition" last year.  The size of the sets varied between 29 and 45 cards depending on the team and frequently included some OB players for the team but otherwise they seemed pretty similar to the ones from the last two years.

I had kind of decided to cut back on things a little this past year and not getting any of the Epoch team sets seemed like a good place to start.  To be honest, none of them looked all that appealing this year so it wasn't a difficult decision not to get them.  But when I was browsing Suruga-ya I came across the complete Lions set for 680 yen so I decided to get it and see what I thought of it.

The set contains 39 cards - 36 cards for the current team and 3 OB players.  The 36 current team cards includes manager Hatsuhiko Tsuji, the six "rookies" (i.e. the players the Lions took in the regular phase of the 2021 NPB draft) and 29 other guys including pretty much who you'd expect - Sosuke Genda, Tomoya Mori, Takeya Nakamura, Shuta Tonosaki, Kona Takahashi, Kaima Taira, Hotoka Yamakawa, Takumi Kuriyama and Yoshinobu Mizukami.  Oddly enough, the 36 representatives of the current Lions team are the exact same 36 Lions included in last year's NPB set.

The photo selection is...ok.  There's way too many boring photos, especially with the pitching staff but some of the photos aren't bad.  Here's a bunch of examples:

#24

#14

#33

#29

#22

#26

#15

The backs kind of remind me of the backs of the NPB cards where they only list the last three years worth of stats:

#04 (Kona Takahashi)

The three OB players are Tsutomo Itoh, Susumu Ohtomo and Ken Suzuki.  I can only assume that they were included just so Epoch could include autographed cards for them but maybe I'm being too cynical.

#37

So basically I'm kind of "meh" about this set.  It's a Lions set and I'm a Lions fan so it's got that going for it but it's not inspiring me to go out and get the other "Premier Edition" team sets.

You can check out the set for yourself over at Jambalaya.