2023 Epoch Hawks Premier Edition

I was browsing the selection of cards at Mint Umeda in Osaka when I came across a bunch of hand collated complete sets for 500 yen apiece.  Several of them were recent BBM team sets that I already had (many of which I bought at higher prices than 500 yen) but I saw the 2023 Epoch Hawks Premier Edition set and the top card of Sadaharu Oh appealed to me:

#33

I decided to buy the set, figuring if nothing else I'll get another Carter Stewart card out of it along with the Oh card.  Of course, when I eventually opened up the set I discovered a couple important things - the set was kind of blah and Stewart didn't appear in it.  I should have guessed there was a reason I hadn't wanted the set when it had come out last year but I was too excited about picking it up for 500 yen.

Let's get to the details about the set.  It contains 39 cards - 32 cards for the manager (at the time) Hiroshi Fujimoto and members of the 2023 Hawks and 7 cards of OB players (and manager Oh).  The active players include most of the Hawks big names from last year - Kensuke Kondoh, Yuki Yanagita, Tsuyoshi Wada, Takuya Kai, Ryoya Kurihara, Taisei Makihara, Ukyo Shuto, Kohei Arihara, Nao Higashihama, etc - along with all the non-ikusei rookies.  The cards are a heavy stock so they've got some heft to them.  The photos though are pretty pedestrian and the design isn't all that interesting.  Here's some example cards:

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#26

#11

#29

#27

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Where the set really disappoints is the selection of OB players (which the card backs refer to as "Legendary Players".  Now you'd think with the rich recent history of the Hawks, they could really pick some relatively big names.  I'm talking Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Seiichi Uchikawa, Toshiya Sugiuchi, Kenji Johjima, Munetaka Kawasaki or Hiroki Kokubo.  Or fan favorites like Yuichi Honda, Yuya Hasegawa or Tadashi Settsu.  Or even former managers Koji Akiyama or Kimiyasu Kudoh to go along with former manager Oh.  Nope.  The six retired Hawks players are Tomoaki Egawa, Kazuyuki Hoashi, Ryoma Matsuda, Katsuhiro Miyaji, Kenta Nakanishi and Yosuke Shimabukuro.  If your reaction to that list is "who?", join the club.  Egawa was at least in the organization for 14 years (although he only got into 345 games at the ichi-gun level over that time) while most of the other players were only with the Hawks for 3-5 years.  Shimabukuro is particularly egrigious - he was in the organization for five seasons but only appeared in two games with the top team during that stretch.  Hardly the stuff of legends.  Here's Matsuda's card as an example:

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 So obviously I'm pretty "meh" about this set but there are probably worse things to spend 500 yen on.  You can check out all the cards in the set for yourself over at Jambalaya (which I probably should have done before buying it).  And I'll point out that Jambalaya is selling the set for 3900 yen which is WAY too much.