2023 Topps NPB Set

Topps' third "flagship" NPB set was released about two months ago and I received my set last week in my latest shipment from ZenMarket.  I vented my spleen about the set when it came out and seeing the cards first hand doesn't really change my opinion about it,  

All the things I complained about in my earlier post are still true.  To review the lowlights - the photos were all taken last year, no players who changed teams over the winter like Kensuke Kondoh or Tomoya Mori are in the set and the backs are horrible - again.  But given that not everyone will hate the set because of that, I'll attempt to hit some of the more positive aspects of it.

Let's go through some details first.  For the third time, the base set contains 216 cards split evenly between the 12 NPB teams (18 cards per team).  The manager for each team is included along with three "rookies" (i.e. 2022 draft picks) - I assume that these are the top three draft picks from last fall but I didn't actually confirm this.  The player selection is a bit odd - despite this set being only two thirds the size of BBM's 1st Version set, Topps included 21 players who weren't in that set including T-Okada, Shota Dohbayashi, Raidel Martinez, Daiki Asama, Hiroyuki Nakajima and Yariel Rodriguez who defected from Cuba (and the Chunichi Dragons) in March.  

The photo selection isn't terrible.  I don't like the processing that Topps does to their photos but they have a more interesting range of poses than either Epoch or Calbee.  They also use the horizontal format a decent amount which I always find positive.  Here's a couple example cards:

#163

#67

#197

#168

#50

As I said before, the photos were all taken last year.  Nao Higashihama and Yoshinobu Yamamoto's cards both show them celebrating their respective no-hitters (although I'm only showing Higashihama's card):

#90

It seems like 90 percent of Kenya Wakatsuki's cards show him in full catching gear while the other 10 percent show him batting so I'm impressed Topps found a unique photo of him:

#215

There are a couple cards in the set that don't actually show the player's face which I find kind of weird:

#141

None of the rookie cards show the player actually playing baseball.  They're either superimposed on a background (Marines, Hawks, Fighters, Buffaloes, Lions and Eagles):

#152

Posed in front of a solid background (white for the Dragons and Giants, blue for the Tigers and grey for the Swallows):

#36

Or at the team's press conference to introduce the 2022 draft class (Carp and Baystars).  The Baystars cards all include the disembodied arm of (presumably) manager Daisuke Miura:

#87

I mentioned earlier that I like horizontally oriented cards.  I do have to question the editorial decision to use a horizontal format for this one though:

#28

That above covers the fronts of the cards.  The backs continue show the barest level of effort from Topps:

#163 (Chusei Mannami)

I keep thinking Topps is going to get better with their NPB products and I keep getting disappointed.  The binder that I keep my Topps NPB cards in is pretty much full now after this set and I will have to think long and hard about whether I will want to devote a second binder to any additional product from them.

To see all the cards in the set (including parallels and inserts), take a look over at Jambalaya.