Whoa!

2020 Epoch One #669

2023 was the sixth year that Epoch has been doing their on demand Epoch One cards.  In four of the previous five years, Epoch produced Epoch One cards for that year's draft picks for one or more teams.  If you're thinking "so what, BBM does that every year with the Rookie Edition set" then I'm not making myself clear.  Epoch has done Epoch One cards for the year's draft picks in the same calendar year that the player was drafted while BBM does their Rookie Edition set the following year.

The 2018 Epoch One "set" included cards for the Dragons' draft picks while 2019 had both the Dragons and Swallows.  2020 had just the Dragons again while 2021 had none.  Epoch went a bit overboard last year, doing cards for six different teams - the Dragons, Swallows, Giants, Fighters, Baystars and Marines.  One could argue a little about last year's cards as the Giants, Fighters, Baystars and Marines cards weren't actually issued until 2023 although the "cover date" on the cards was still 2022.  I had been waiting to see if Epoch was doing to do any draft pick cards this off season but so far they had not.  I had pretty much given up hope but that all changed today.

Epoch announced Epoch One cards for the entire 2023 draft classes for seven teams today - the Dragons, Lions, Swallows, Tigers, Baystars, Eagles and Marines.  That's 45 total cards!  Now, I've never tracked how many Epoch One cards Epoch has ever announced on a single day but I'm going to guess 45 is by far the most.  The cards are still 500 yen apiece so if you wanted to buy all 45, it would run you 22,500 yen (or about $153).  There's just one thing about them - the "cover date" on the cards is 2024, not 2023.  In years past, Epoch has started issuing that year's Epoch One cards at Opening Day but this year they're starting the day training camps opened.

It's kind of silly but this makes these cards much less interesting to me.  I had gotten all of the previous cards because the idea of getting the card of a draft pick the year the player was drafted was very attractive.  For example, the above card of Hiroto Takahashi was his only 2020 card and it came out two months before his first BBM cards in the 2021 Rookie Edition set.  But these are basically a slightly earlier and much more expensive 7/12 of the Rookie Edition set and they're just not as attractive to me.

It's entirely possible that Epoch will add the draft picks from other teams as well.  It's always been a bit odd that they don't do Epoch One cards for all the teams but it wouldn't surprise me if they added the draft classes for the Giants or Fighters.  Actually the only team that would surprise me is Orix as Epoch has never done any Epoch One cards for the Buffaloes.