*The set being released is the first part of the Eagles annual team issued set - called 1st Version. There's a big change with it this year which I didn't really realize when I wrote about it back in December - the Eagles are doing the set with Epoch. I mean, it's listed on Epoch's website and everything. I know BBM has worked with a couple teams (Fighters, Hawks and Lions) in doing their "team issued" sets over the years but Epoch hasn't done any.
- Rookie Edition, BBM's annual draft pick set, will be out in late February. This is a pack-based set containing 135 cards in its base set. 121 of those cards are for the players taken in last October's draft along with a 12 card "New Face" subset featuring young players from each team and a two card "draft pick list" subset (included to make the number of cards in the base set divisible by three). There are three insert sets - "Starting Point" (12 cards featuring a player from each team as a rookie), "Close Relationship" (8 cards each featuring two draftees who have some "relationship" such as having been high school teammates) and "Rookie Of The Year" (2 cards featuring last year's Rookies Of The Year (Shoki Murakami and Shunpeita Yamashita). There are autographed cards available although autographs of the draftees are only available through exchange cards. There will be "secret versions" (short printed photo variants) of the 12 first round picks along with Baystars third round pick Rikuku Takeda who was drafted as a pitcher but intends to be a two way player. (I'm a bit confused as to why there's only 121 draftees when according to the draft's Wikipedia page, there were 122 players drafted - and all of them signed. I don't know if someone signed too late to be in the set which has happened a couple of times in the past.)
- BBM's annual set for retiring players will also be out in late February. Once again the set will not only include baseball players but retiring athletes in other sports including basketball, track & field, boxing, soccer and diving. The set is sold as a 37 card box set. Each box will include the entire 35 card base set, one of 15 possible "Bright Future" insert cards (with parallel versions available) and one autographed card. (No idea why there are "Bright Future" cards in a set for retiring players.) The set includes baseball players like Seiichi Uchikawa, Nobuhiro Matsuda and Ginji (Akaminai),
- BBM has also announced that their initial flagship set for 2023 - 1st Version - will be out in late April. The set appears to be following the same pattern it has since 2015, at least in how the base set breaks down. There's the usual 324 player/manager cards (27 for each team), the 12 team checklist cards and the 36 "Cross Something" cards that will be continued in the 2nd Version set later in the year - this year the Something is "Earth". That makes a total of 372 cards in the base set. Nine cards for each team have several different facsimile autograph parallels. There are also parallel versions for 72 of the rookie cards (or all the rookie cards). There are three varieties of short printed photo variants - each team has a card with a rare "secret" version, a card with a rarer "ultra secret" version and a card with an even rarer "super ultra secret" version (and they could all possibly be variants for the same player). There are two non-premium insert sets - "Prince Of The Team" (12 cards - one per team) and "Japonism" (12 cards - one per team and using some sort of Edo period theme) - and three serially numbered premium insert sets - "Amazing" (24 cards - two per team), "Cross Foil Signing" (6 cards - all members of the Giants) and "3D Cross Earth" (12 cards - one per team as you probably guessed). Some of the insert sets will probably have parallel versions but I don't see anything about them yet. There are memorabilia cards available for four different players although the only one actually named is Shunpeita Yamashita. There will also of course be autographed cards available.
- "216 Co., Ltd." (aka "Hits" and "TIC") will be releasing their annual "mini shikishi" card set for the Hawks on March 30th. There's 40 oversized cards available - 20 "normal" and 20 "special with foil autograph". There's 20 players listed so everyone has a "normal" and a "special" (which may be autographed) card.
- Epoch is releasing the 2023 edition of their Holographica set on March 2nd. This is one of their annual collaborations with the OB Club. It's also one of their "ultra high end" sets with six card boxes selling for 16,500 yen (roughly $112). The base set contains 55 cards and all 55 cards have a serially numbered "hologram" parallel card. There's also something like eight different types of autograph card available.
- Two weeks after the Holographica set Epoch is releasing an OB set dedicated to the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. "Memories Of The Kintetsu Buffaloes" is another "ultra high end" set although it's slightly cheaper - 15,000 yen (~$102) for a six card box. The base set has 43 cards and there's a five card "Baseball Mates" insert set. There's five different types of autographed cards - all 43 players have an "Authentic Autograph" card. I didn't take a super close look at the players listed as being in the set but it looks like both Tuffy Rhodes and Norihiro Nakamura are in the set but Hideo Nomo is not.
- Konami stopped doing their "Baseball Collection" collectible card game cards after the 2022 season and no one stepped into the niche last year. This year, however, there's a new player entering the arena. Bushiroad, a Japanese game manufacturer who has done other collectible card game sets, is releasing an NPB related set called "DreamOrder" on April 20th. They're releasing a starter deck for each team containing 12 players. Each box is 1500 yen (just over $10). In addition there are eight cards booster packs available for 400 yen each (about $2.70) - there's a separate pack for each league (Central and Pacific). I assume the players available in the booster packs are not available in the starter decks but I don't know for sure. I also don't know what the total number of cards is but the booster packs are labelled "Vol. 1" so there's likely going to be more cards coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment