One of the things I've enjoyed about collecting NPB baseball cards is the lack of cards that are exclusive to some retail outfit or another. It seems like in any given year, Topps' MLB sets have cards - parallels or otherwise - that can only be found in packs bought from Target or Walmart or Walgreens or Fanatics. Now mind you, NPB cards tend to have a ridiculous number of parallels but typically all the inserts and all the parallels are available in any random pack you buy from any seller. (The one exception to this is the Light Packs that BBM used to do for the 1st & 2nd Version sets but I'm pretty sure they don't do those any more. And those weren't particular to any particular retailer.)
Until now that is. In the last week or so, I've fielded questions from two different Jasons - the one of "Clyde's Stale Cards" fame and the one who sells cards on Ebay - asking about two different versions of boxes for the new 2024 Epoch NPB set - black ones and white ones. I did a little research (which is a much more impressive way to say "I looked at Epoch's website") and discovered that the black boxes were a "Retail Edition" that were only sold at FamilyMart convenience stores while the white ones were the standard boxes available everywhere.
The two products are a little different. Both have a 348 card base set along with 90 parallels but that's where the similarities end. The "Retail Edition" has a photo variant parallel for each of the first round draft picks from last fall. In addition, the standard version has 24 Holospectra insert cards while the "Retail Edition" only has 12. There's no overlap between the two Holospectra checklists and the numbering for them is different - the standard version cards are numbered HS-01 to HS-24 while the "Retail Edition" cards are numbered HS-01R to HS12R. Lastly there are six more autographed cards available in the "Retail Edition" than the standard version - 146 to 140. I didn't verify that they have 140 in common or who the extra six in the "Retail Edition" are.
While this doesn't really affect me all that much - I'm only picking up the base set - I'm kind of disappointed that this nonsense has made its way to Japan. I'm also kind of surprised it started with Epoch and not Topps. I just hope this doesn't grow much bigger than this.
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