2023 BBM 1st Version Set

2023 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size: 372 cards numbered 1-336, CM01-CM36
Cards Per Team:  28 (team card, manager + 26 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards:  N/A
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Cross Moon (36)
Inserts:  Japonism (12), Future Stardom (12), Amazing (24, #'d to 50), 3D Cross Moon (12, #'d to 25), Cross Foil Signing (6 - all Giants, #'d to 15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Munetaka Murakami and Teruaki Sato.  Each jersey card is serially numbered to 200 plus a parallel patch version numbered to 20.  There are also two different two player jersey cards (Yamamoto and Murakami on one and Sasaki and Sato on the other) numbered to 20 each with a parallel patch version of each numbered to 5.  There's also a "quad" memorabilia card with all four players on it serially numbered to 10 with a parallel patch version serially numbered to 5.  There are four different types of autographed card available - "Cross Signature", "Special Signature", "Japonism" and "Buyback Autographs".  The last features "buyback" BBM cards for 16 players or former players - So Taguchi, Yutaro Sugimoto, Hiroki Kokubo, Kenta Imamiya, Kazuo Matsui, Toshiaki Imae, Hiroaki Shimauchi, Tomohiro Kuroki, Shogo Nakamura, Hichori Morimoto, Naoyuki Uwasawa, Tomohito Ito, Takuro Ishii, Keita Sano, Takuya Asao and Shinnosuke Ogasawara.  There are also a couple of cards with multiple player autographs but I don't know if they fall into the "Cross Signature" or "Special Signature" sets.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" short printed alternate photo version.  Another 12 have an "ultra secret" much more rare short printed alternate photo version and 12 others have a "super ultra secret" extremely rare short printed alternate photo version .  108 regular players cards (9 per team) have seven facsimile autograph parallels - silver, gold (#'d to 100), pink (#'d to 75), holograph (#'d to 50), red (#'d to 25), purple (#'d to 10) and sky blue (1 of 1) - this includes the "secret" versions of the cards as well (and I assume the numbering is separate but I don't know that for sure).  Additionally each of the 108 cards also has a "kira" parallel.  69 of the rookie cards (which I think is all of them) have seven numbered parallel versions - "Silver" (#'d to 300), "Gold" (#'d to 100), "Pink" (#'d to 75), "Kiwi Green" (#'d to 50), "Holo Foil" (#'d to 25), "Purple" (#'d to 10) and "Sky Blue Foil" (1 of 1).  The "Cross Moon" cards have two parallel versions - "Holo" (numbered to 100) and  "1 of 1".  There are two parallel versions for the "Future Stardom" inserts - "gold" (#'d to 200) and "light blue" (#'d to 100). The "Japonism" cards have three parallels - "Gold" (#'d to 200), "Blue" (#'d to 100) and "Royal Purple" (#'d to 25).

Notable Rookies: Shota Morishita, Kota Yazawa

The 22nd annual edition of BBM's annual 1st Version set was released about a month ago.  This is the largest part of BBM's three headed flagship set (with the other two sets - 2nd Version and Fusion - expected to be released in August and November respectively).  Fore the ninth straight year the base set contains 372 cards - 324 "regular" player cards (27 per team including the manager), 12 team checklist cards and 36 "Cross Moon" cards.  

My frequent gripe about NPB sets over the past eight years or so is the monotony of the photographs with a lot of "pitchers pitching, batters batting and catchers catching" shots.  I've felt that BBM has really been making an effort to improve their photography over the last couple years and I feel like they've really done a great job with this set.  It was difficult to pick just a handful of cards to show so I ended up picking one from each team.  These aren't necessarily my favorites from each team but I think this selection shows the variety of photos in the set:

#156

#040

#234

#205

#301

#254

#021

#120

#182

#087

#075

#287

While some of the photos were likely taken last season, there's a couple of teams who changed uniforms over the winter (the Baystars and Carp and I think the Dragons and Giants) and the photos on all of their cards were taken this spring.  And unlike Topps, they have cards of most of the players who switched teams over the winter with their new teams - Kensuke Kondoh with the Hawks, Tomoya Mori with the Buffaloes, Yota Kyoda with the Baystars, etc.  The photos of the rookies were all taken in training camp as well:

#054

The backs look like they pretty much always do:

Back of #180 (Munetaka Murakami)

One nice thing about this set is it includes a number of new foreign players.  There hadn't been many in 1st Version the last two years due to COVID-related visa issues.  This year's set though includes Matt Davidson, Courtney Hawkins, Sheldon Neuse, David MacKinnon, Mark Payton, Maikel Franco, Dillon Peters, Foster Griffin and Lewis Brinson (among others).  I know there's a couple new foreign players like Marwin Gonzalez and Frank Schwindel who didn't make it into the set though,

Besides Gonzalez and Schwindel there's a couple other odd omissions that I noticed.  Hirokazu Sawamura doesn't have a card even though I would have thought he would have been in camp with the Marines early enough.  I think the other omissions may be related to the WBC - Ariel Martinez, Raidel Martinez and Wu Nien-ting were on WBC rosters and are not in the set.  On the other hand, Sung Chia-hao, Livan Moinelo, Neftali Soto and Edwin Escobar were also on WBC rosters but are in the set so maybe not.

I do have my OTHER usual gripe about the set - it's too small.  BBM includes a card of every player taking the "regular" phase of last falls draft which cuts into the 26 cards that each team has for its players.  BBM has to make tougher decisions about who to include then and guys like Shoki Murakami of the Tigers and Yuto Akihiro of the Giants end up without cards.  I wish they'd go back to 36 cards per team but they haven't had that many since 2010.

The photos on the team checklists were all taken during training camp.  They're all nice although I don't think any of them really stand out.

#334

The "Cross Moon" cards are half of BBM's annual "cross set subset" - the other half will be in the 2nd Version set.  As usual the fronts of these feature a photo of a player superimposed on some common background while the backs show the original photo.  The background this year appears to be a lake in a forest with a huge full moon in the sky.  They're not unattractive but I got bored with this concept ten years ago so I'm pretty much "meh" about them.  The one twist this year is that instead of all 36 cards being of players, two of them depict new managers Takahiro Arai of the Carp and Kazuo Matsui of the Lions as players.  Here's the front and back of Arai's card:

#CM31

Back of #CM31

The set I picked up included all 12 cards in the "Future Stardom" insert set.  This insert set features the first round pick from each team on a shiny card that doesn't necessarily scan well.  Here's an example:

#F06

As always you can see all the cards (along with inserts and parallels) over at Jambalaya.