2023 BBM Fusion

 2023 BBM Fusion Set Summary

Size: 144 cards numbered 1-99, TH01-TH24, 601-621
Cards Per Team:  Variable
Team Card Theme:  N/A
Number Of Leader Cards:  24
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  1st Version Update (21)
Inserts:  First Pitch Ceremony (30), Great Record (24), Legendary Player (12), Treasure (12, #'d to 25), Esperanza (24, #'d to 50)
Memorabilia Cards: There are three different types of autographed card available - "Team Pack Version" (cards in the style of the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set), "Autograph" and "Picturesque".  There are two versions of autographed cards for the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards as well - the "silver paper" version is the more rare of the two - not all the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards have autographed versions though.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards and one of the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards have a "secret" alternate photo version.  "Title Holder" cards have four parallels - "silver paper" (#'d to 200), "gold paper" (#'d to 100), "silver paper + holo PP" (#'d to 50) and "gold paper + holo PP" (#'d to 25).  "Great Record" insert cards have six facsimile signature parallels - "kiwi green" (#'d to 200), "gold" (#'d to 100), "holo blue" (#'d to 75), "holo" (#'d to 50), "red" (#'d to 25) and "royal purple" (#'d to 10).  "Legendary Player" insert cards have the same six parallels as the "Great Record" cards but they're not facsimile signatures - I think they're just the finish on the cards.  "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards have five parallels - "Holo PP" (#'d to 300), "Silver Paper" (#'d to 200), "Gold Paper" (#'d to 100), "Silver Paper + Holo PP" (#'d to 50) and "Gold Paper + Holo PP" (#'d to 25).
Notable Rookies: None

The 2023 edition of BBM's Fusion set, traditionally their final baseball-only set of the year, was released about a month ago.  This is the Ghidorah of BBM's annual sets with the base set consisting of three separately numbered subsets.  There's the "1st Version Update" which is numbered in continuation of the 1st and 2nd Version sets (#600 to #621 this time around), the "Title Holder" subset which is numbered TH01 to TH24 and the "regular" cards (which officially are known as the "Hall Of Fame" subset despite them not having any actual connection to the Hall Of Fame") which are numbered from 1 to 99.  To further confuse things, there's the 30 short-printed "First Pitch Ceremony" cards (which I have listed under the inserts above) which are numbered in continuation of the same subset in the 2nd Version set.

The 99 "Hall Of Fame" cards serve as kind of a season summary but it's really not that straight forward.  In general, each event from 2023 that is highlighted on a card is followed in the set by another card highlighting a related event in the past.  Sometimes there are multiple cards from either 2023 or the past in the sequence.  

If this is confusing (and I know it is), maybe I can clear things up somewhat with an example.  On August 18, Shuta Ishikawa of the Hawks threw a no-hitter.  This event is commemorated on card #75.  Card #76 commemorates the no-hitter thrown by Kodai Senga of the Hawks back on September 6, 2019.  The connection is not only are these two of only three no-hitters ever thrown by Hawks pitchers but they're also the only two no-hitters thrown by players who started their professional careers as ikusei players:

#75 (left) & #76 (right)

48 of the 99 "regular" cards feature events from the 2023 season although as usual I don't know what many of them are.  There's a card for the other 2023 no-hitter - Yoshinobu Yamamoto's - along with Yuki Okabayashi's hitting streak, Yuki Matsui reaching 200 saves and the game where Chusei Mannami both led off with a home run and ended the game with a home run.  There are several cards featuring a pitcher batting - Koyo Aoyagi, Masanori Ishikawa and Masato Morishita.  Many of NPB stars have at least one card in this subset - Tetsuto Yamada, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Maki and Takeya Nakamura, Shota Imanaga and Koji Chikamoto.  Yamamoto has two cards.  A number of the cards feature alternate uniforms.  Twelve of the cards have "secret" versions - short printed photo variations - but I don't have of them.  Despite there being 48 cards there are not an even number of cards per team.  I think the Tigers have the most cards with seven while the Marines only have two and the Lions have just one.  Here's some examples:

#22

#24

#32

#38

#40

#53

#60

Of the 51 players appearing on the cards that commemorate something that happened before 2023, 46 of them are retired.  The five active players are Yasuaki Yamasaki of the Baystars, Naoki Miyanishi of teh Fighters, Yu Darvish of the Padres, Kenta Maeda of the Twins and Senga of the Mets (obviously the MLB players are depicted as NPB players).  Miyanishi's kind of unique in that he has cards in the set for something he did in 2023 and something he did in 2016.  Retired players include Sadaharu Oh, Koichi Tabuchi, Yoshio Yoshida, Hisashi Yamada, Eiji Sawamura, Shigeru Sugishita, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui and Takao Kajimoto.  There's two cards for Tetsuya Yoneda - one with Hankyu and the other with Kintetsu.  There are three foreign players - Leon Lee, Alonzo Powell and Randy Messenger.  There's a couple cards of pitchers batting - Maeda, Yoneda and Sugishita.  BBM again did a pretty good job digging up photos of the older players - I don't think I'd seen any of these photos before and for someone like Sawamura, that's pretty hard to do.  Here are some samples:

#21

#54

#61

#80

#86

The Title Holder cards are a throwback to the Leader cards BBM used to include in their flagship sets between 1991 and 2013.  There are a total of 24 cards (numbered TH01 to TH24) that include the leader (or leaders) in twelve statistical categories for each league -  Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs, Hits, OBP, Stolen Bases, ERA, Winning Percentage, Wins, Saves, Hold Points and Strikeouts.  If a player leads the league in multiple categories then he has multiple cards in this subset - for example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto has four cards since he led the PL in ERA, Winning Percentage, Wins and Strikeouts.  Kensuke Kondoh is on three cards and Shugo Maki and Katsuki Azuma are on two.  You'll notice I said "are on" rather than "have" for those guys - if more than one player tie for the lead in a category they all appear on the card.  There are three cards that show multiple players this yea, including the PL Home Run card (which has Kondoh and two other players on it) and the CL Hits card (which has Maki and one other player).  Here's a couple so you can see what they look like:

#TH14

#TH03

The "1st Version Update" subset features cards of 21 players who were either not included in this year's 1st Version set or the "1st Version Update" subset from the 2nd Version set or were traded since their earlier appearance.  Actually, I think there's only one guy - Shingo Usami - in that category.  Usami appeared in 1st Version as a member of the Fighters but was traded mid-season to the Dragons for Yuji Gunji.  Gunji is also in the subset but did not appear in either of the two previous sets.  Normally there's a handful of foreign players in this subset but this time around there's only one - Leandro Cedeno of Orix.  This means there's several foreign players this year like Alen Hanson of the Fighters who do not have cards in BBM's flagship sets.  Other players appearing in this subset include Takayuki Kajitani of the Giants, Kohei Azuma of the Buffaloes and Shingo Ishikawa of the Marines.  The cards are numbered 601 to 621 in continuation of the 1st and 2nd Version sets.  Here's a couple examples:

#602

#614

#621

The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are short printed and not considered part of the base set but I decided to get them anyway.  I ultimately spent about 7500 yen for the Fusion base set, inserts and "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards and about two thirds of that were these cards.  If you're not familiar with this subset, it features various Japanese celebrities throwing out the first pitch at a ballgame.  I've mentioned a couple times recently that I had thought I could skip these a few years back but have ultimately decided that I still want to get them.  As usual I don't know who many of these people are but it's always kind of entertaining researching them.  There's three cards for members of the Idol group ≠ME - Shiori Nagata, Momo Sakurai and Moeko Kanisawa - along with a bunch of other Gravure Idols - Yuko Ogura, Yuuka Kikuchi, Megumu Nakazato, Sarina Soda, Chihiro Kawakami, Risa Yukihira, Ano, Hazuki Mukai, Yuzuki Hidaka and Hiyuka Sakagawa.  There's also voice actress Saki Fujita, voice actress/singer Yuri Komagata, enka singer Midori Oka, model Airi Tanaka, kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, actress Anna Yamada, Track & Field athlete Sae Takemoto, announcer Ayae Hakamada, "Seidokaikan Karateka" Nobuaki Kakuda, model Nicole Fujita, singer-songwriter Masashi Sada, YouTube pianist Harami-chan, actress Wakana Matsumoto, actress Haru and (of course) Gravure Idol, tarento and sportscaster Ami Inamura.  There's also the comedy duo U-Jikuji and Lin "Mizuki" Xiang, cheerleader for the Rakuten Monkeys of the CPBL.  A third of the people in this subset have appeared in previous subsets - Ogura and Kakuda were in the 2005 2nd Version set, Haru was in the 2010 2nd Version set, Fujita was in the 2017 2nd Version set, Soda and Hidaka were in the 2019 Fusion set, Kawakami and Yamada were in the 2022 Fusion set and Risa Yukihaira was in this year's 2nd Version set.  Ami Inamura has been in six previous sets - 2016 2nd Version, 2016 Fusion, 2017 2nd Version, 2017 Fusion, 2018 Fusion and 2021 2nd Version.  The cards are numbered FP31 to FP60 since this is a continuation of the "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset from this year's 2nd Version set.  Here's the card of Lin Xiang - wearing a Rakuten Eagles jersey as opposed to a Rakuten Monkeys one - as an example:

#FP58

BBM did a "secret" version of Haru's card.  The new photo depicts here taking part in the "Fox Dance" at the same Fighters game that she threw out the first pitch at.  Here's both versions of the card:

#FP60 normal (left) and "secret" (left)

I don't normally pick up parallel versions of cards but my friend Jason sent me a couple.  Here's the "Holo PP" parallel of Megumu Nakazato's card and the "Silver Paper" parallel of Momo Sakurai's card:

#FP42

#FP40

It's really hard to tell from the scan that Nakazato's card has a holographic finish showing little hearts.  The silver tint on Sakurai's card is a little more visible.

The Fusion set traditionally has two non-premium insert sets and I picked up both of them with my set.  The less interesting one (to me anyway) is the "Legendary Player" insert set which features 12 OB players - one from each team (with Kintetsu represented in place of Rakuten).  Each player also has a "regular" card although it may not be for the same team.  For example, Kimiyasu Koudoh appears as a Yokohama Baystar in the regular set but is a Seibu Lions in this insert set:

#LP03

The three MLB players I mentioned earlier - Darvish, Maeda and Senga - are all included in this insert set along with Hideki Matsui, Chihiro Kaneko, Hiroo Ishii and Randy Messenger among others.

The more interesting insert set (and the reason I pick these up every year) is called "Great Records".  This is a 24 card set that features two players from each team who achieved some milestone during the 2022 season.  Actually I say "players" but there's a cards Marines mascot Mar-Kun performed in his 2000th game in June.  Other milestones commemorated include Yoshisa Hirano's 250th save, Naoya Masuda's 200th save, Yuki Yanagita's 250th home run, Takayuki Kishi's 150th victory, Shota Inamaga's 1000th strikeout, Kazuma Okamoto's 200th home run and Yohei Ohshima's 2000th hit.  Here's a couple examples:

#GR03

#GR24

As always all the cards from the set can be seen over at Jambalaya.