I've been putting off doing a "new releases" post for over two weeks now and it seems like every time I delay it, there's news of yet another new set. So let's get caught up before there's another announcement...
- Epoch has announced the seventh entry in their series of "Premier Edition" team sets for 2023. The Carp set will hit the shelves on August 19th and will have a 38 card base set featuring mostly active players. Each base set card has a holographic parallel. The set will have the same massive amount of insert cards as all the other "Premier Edition" sets - "Regular Printed Signature (Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Gold)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Gold)" (9 cards), "Metal Power (Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Gold)" (18 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram A)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram B)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram C)" (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards), "Gem" (6 cards) and "Black Gem" (6 cards). It looks like there's an "Authentic" autograph card corresponding to every card in the base set along with ten "Rookie" autograph cards, six "Star" autograph cards, 29 "1-of-1" autograph cards and eight "Baseball" autograph cards.
- While I suspect that the Carp set will be the final "Premier Edition" team set for the year, Epoch is releasing the first of their ultra-high end "Stars & Legends" combination active/OB team sets. The Tigers set will be released on August 11th and four card boxes will retail for 18,700 yen (roughly $130). There are 65 cards in the base set and three types of insert cards - Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards #'d to 25), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards #'d to 5), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 1-of-1 cards). There also two types of "Special" insert cards - "Gem" (9 cards serially numbered but I'm not sure to what) and "Black Gem" (9 cards #'d to 5). There are also four types of autograph cards - "Authentic" (64 cards), "Star" (37 cards), "Legendary" (27 cards) and "Baseball" (12 cards).
- Epoch will be releasing their annual "Pacific League Rookies" box set on August 19th. This set features all the non-ikusei draft picks from last fall's draft for the six Pacific League teams - essentially it's Epoch's version of half of "Rookie Edition". Each box contains 37 cards - the 34 card base set plus three "special" cards. I'm not quite sure if there's any guarantee about what "special" cards you get in the box but I think they include serially numbered parallels of the base set cards, "Gem" insert cards (six possible - I assume for the first round pick for each team) and autographed cards. Each player has four possible autograph cards - "Authentic Silver Foil", "Authentic Hologram Foil", "1-of-1" and "Baseball".
- "Genesis", BBM's annual high end set, will be released in late September. As usual, the base set will contain 120 cards - 108 player cards (nine per team) plus 12 overly thick checklist cards designed to feel like memorabilia cards when someone is examining an unopened pack. As usual, no one will really care about the base set as the whole point of "Genesis" is the parallels (there are likely several for each base card although no details have been released yet), the insert cards ("Elite Of Nine", "Game Changer", "Rookie Limited" and "Combo Cross Foil Signing"), the autograph cards, the memorabilia cards and the combination autograph/memorabilia cards. The webpage lists a dizzying array of autograph and/or memorabilia cards for many of the NPB stars - I think the one I find most intriguing is a "super patch booklet card" for Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Ssaki although I think that might be just a wee bit out of my price range.
- The second part of the Eagle team issued set - 2nd Version - was released last Friday. The base set has 82 cards - one card for every player on the 70 man roster as well as the ikusei players (all members of the team as of April). There's also two checklist cards that are numbered separately. Each base set cards has three parallels - silver facsimile signature, gold facsimile signature and red facsimile signature (which is 1-of-1). There are three different insert sets - "Tohoku Stronghold" (six cards with a die-cut parallel version), "Rising Eagles" (nine cards) and "Stars Of Tohoku" (eight cards). There are ten different "Rookie Bib" memorabilia cards and every player in the set has an autographed card. Jambalaya has the cards online if you want to see them.
- BBM and the Lions have once again teamed up to produce the "L Collection Vol. 1" set (not sure why they call it "Vol. 1" every year when I've never seen a Vol. 2). I couldn't find information about this set on the Lions website but Jambalaya has most of the cards up. The base set appears to have either 35 or 36 cards - the cards are numbered 1 to 36 but Jambalaya doesn't have card #22 listed. I'm not sure if it's because they don't have it or if it was not issued. There are also 12 insert cards. None of the players in the insert cards have a card in the base set and as you'd expect, they're the bigger names from the team - Sosuke Genda, Shuta Tonosaki, Takeya Nakamura, Kona Takahashi, Kaima Taira, Takumi Kuriyama and manager Kazuo Matsui.
- Another team issued set I couldn't find any information about on the team's website is for the Fighters' cheerleading/dance squad. The "Fighters Girls 37card" set came out a few weeks ago but I really don't know anything more about it than the 20 cards for it that Jambalaya has on their site. To be honest, I don't even know if there's only 20 cards in the set since I really have no idea how big many Fighters girls there are.
- SCC's first KBO set of the year was released last week and Dan Skrezyna (Korean Cardboard) tweeted the details. It's called "Rainbow Draft" and it has a 108 card base set. 35 of the cards also have a "Base Holo" version, 40 have both a "Check" and a "Check Holo" version and 35 have "Rookie Blue", "Rookie Green", "Rookie Orange", "Rookie Rainbow" and "Rookie Red" versions. All 108 players have autograph cards and it appears that there are three different varieties of those. There are also 35 "Printing Plates". Dan's put the set's checklist up at the Trading Card Database. It appears to be very weighed towards younger players rather than the established KBO stars - for example, Lee Jung-hoo is not in the set.
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