I got my 2024 Calbee Series One set in the mail last week in the same shipment that I got my 2024 BBM Rookie Edition set in. The set is the first of what I hope will be three Series this year but fear will only be two.
The base set contains 84 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (5 per team), 18 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards. The 60 player cards is the same that last year's sets had so it looks like the days of 72 player cards (which was most of the last 10-12 years) are over. Since it's an even numbered year, the player's names are in Japanese on the front of the cards (they've been alternating every year since 2016 with English names in the odd number years and Japanese names in the even numbered years). As has unfortunately become standard, the photos are very "meh" - pretty much all "pitchers pitching, batters batting" with only one "catcher catching" card. There isn't even a horizontally oriented card to break up the monotony.
I've always felt that the player selection is kind of light on the big stars for Series One each year and that's true of this set to some extent. Probably the biggest names in the set are Tetsuto Yamada, Tomoyuki Sugano, Sosuke Genda, Kona Takahashi and Yuma Mune along with dinosaurs like Masahiro Tanaka and Tsuyoshi Wada. Now Calbee tends to not have a "regular" card of a player who's also in the accompanying subset which explains why guys like Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Maki, Yuki Yanagita and Kensuke Kondoh don't have cards but not why Roki Sasaki or Munetaka Murakami don't. There are no cards for rookies (at least in the baseball card sense - no 2023 draftees) and no cards for any players who changed teams over the winter. There's also only one foreign player - Jose Osuna of the Swallows.
Here's some example cards:
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| #021 Tetsuto Yamada |
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| #053 Kona Takahashi |
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| #048 Takero Okajima |
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| #031 Yuma Mune |
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| #018 Tomoyuki Sugano |
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| #006 Masato Morishita |
I will say that despite the unimaginative selection of photos, the cards themselves look good as always.
The 18 "Title Holder" cards feature all the players who either won major awards (MVP, Rookie Of The Year, Sawamura) or led the league in one of the major categories last year - UNLESS that player moved to MLB over the winter. As a result of that last stipulation, this subset does not include Yoshinobu Yamamoto (PL MVP, Wins, ERA & Strikeout leader), Yuki Matsui (PL Save leader) or Shota Imanaga (CL Strikeout leader). It does, however, include the afore-mentioned Okamoto, Maki, Yanagita and Kondoh along with Shoki Murakami, Koji Chikamoto, Ukyo Shuto, Yuma Tongu and Gregory Polanco. Here's the Chikamoto card:
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| #T-10 |
Calbee traditionally has 12 checklist cards spread across their usual three Series - four per Series. The fact that Series One this year has six checklist cards is what makes me worry that, like last year, this year Calbee will only release two Series.
The good thing about the checklist cards is that usually they have the most interesting photos in the set and I think that's true once again for this set. The cards feature events from last season for the top three teams in each league - Yusuke Ohyama of the Tigers having a walk off hit in the tenth inning of a game on August 22, the Buffaloes celebrating their third straight PL pennant, Shogo Akiyama of the Carp's walk off hit in Game One of the First Stage of the Central League Climax Series, Yudai Fujioka of the Marines' game tying hit in Game Three of the First Stage of the PL Climax Series, Toshiro Miyazaki of the Baystars' double to help them make the playoffs on September 29th, and Shuta Ishikawa of the Hawks' no-hitter on August 18th. Here's the Fujioka card:
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| #C-04 |
If I sound disappointed in the set, it's because I am somewhat. I feel like I'm repeating the old joke about the couple that goes to a restaurant - one of them complains that the food tastes terrible and the other one agrees and adds that the portions are too small. I don't think the cards are ugly but the photo selection is bland and the set should be larger. And I'll be very disappointed if there are only two Series again like last year. But despite all that - it's a Calbee set. If you like Calbee sets, you'll like this one.
You can see all the cards (including the "Star" and "Legend" inserts) over at Jambalaya.
4 comments:
I'm pretty much on the same page with you about everything there.
I am hoping there is some alternative explanation for the 6 card checklist series that doesn't involve them not making Series 3 this year, but its hard to come up with one. It doesn't preclude them from making a Series 3 of course but it certainly is a bit ominous.....
I guess we'll know in June one way or another. Either they'll make a set announcement for Series Two or not. If they do, we'll see if there's six checklist cards in the set. If so, that'll tell us there'll likely only be two Series.
Well, there isn’t anything that precludes them from simply abandoning the “one checklist per team” system and do 18 checklists (6 per series), so I don’t know if we could conclude from a 6 card checklist in Series 2 that there will be no Series 3.
Its possible for example that they are just planning for a potential contingency like last year where supply and production problems screwed up their release schedule and led to Series 3 being cancelled and 4 teams not being on a checklist. In case that happens again, maybe they want to make sure every team gets a checklist in the first two series and do something else with Series 3 checklists. But that would just be contingency planning and not an indication that they don’t intend to do Series 3.
This might be just wishful thinking on my part though…..
All that is true and I hope it turns out to be the case that there's still three Series this year.
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