Second Flagships, Team Sets And A KBO Set

It's been about six weeks since the last roundup I did for upcoming releases - long enough that one of these isn't "upcoming" any more but was released last week.  

- The second part of BBM's annual three part flagship set will be out in early August.  As has been pretty standard for the last 10 years, this year's edition of 2nd Version will contain a base set of 300 cards which will break down as 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 36 "1st Version Update" cards (3 per team), 12 team checklists and 36 cards (3 per team) making up the second half of the "Cross Earth" cross set subset (with the first half having been in the 1st Version set).  There's also a currently unannounced number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards which are likely short-printed and not considered part of the base set.  There are six insert sets - "Star Portraits" (12 cards), "Coming Heroes" (24 cards), "Fireworks" (24 cards), "Treasure" (12 cards), "Foil Picturesque" (12 cards) and "Combo Cross Foil Signing" (13 cards) - I think the last four are all serially numbered but I'm not positive.  The set will also include the usual plethora of facsimile autograph parallels as well as the alternate photo "Secret Versions" of various scarcity.  There are a bunch of autographed cards including an autographed Yoshinobu Tsutsugoh card in the style of the autographed cards in the BBM Baystars team set and autographs of rookies and/or prospects Ryuki Watarai, Kengo Matsumoto, Shinnosuke Hada and Keito Mombetsu.  There's also memorabilia cards of Watarai and other rookies.

- BBM has announced the last two of their annual "comprehensive" team sets - the Carp and the Eagles.  I'm going to split the descriptions of them up because the Eagles set is a departure from BBM's standard team set template.  First the Carp set - it'll have a base set of 81 cards, 70 of which are "regular" player cards for manager Takahiro Arai and the players on the team's 70 man roster.  The other eleven cards are split between three subsets that are not fully defined yet - "Young Players To Watch" (three cards), "Early Game Highlights" (five cards) and "Classmates" (three cards).  There are 18 non-premium insert cards split up into four separate, not quite defined sets - "Core Players" (nine cards), "Up-And-Coming Players" (three cards), "Home-Grown Veterans" (three cards) and "Rookies" (three cards).  There are also two serially numbered insert sets - "Treasure" (24 cards) and "Esperanza" (15 cards).  There will also be autographed cards available.  The set will be out in mind-July.

- The Eagles are celebrating their twentieth season this year and BBM's expanded the base set for their Eagles team set to 117 to commemorate this event.  Essentially it looks like they're doing the standard 81 card team set with 67 "regular" player cards for manager Toshiaki Imae and the 70 man roster players and four not fully defined subsets - "Brightest Hope" (two cards), "Main Pitcher" (five cards), "Main Batter" (five cards) and "Record Makers" (two cards) - and then adding an extra 36 cards to cover the Eagles 20th Anniversary.  There are 18 cards for "Team Alumni", nine "Team Records" cards, six "Rookie Reprint" cards and three "Team History" cards.  There's only the usual 18 non-premium insert cards though, split between "Main Players" (nine cards), "Rookie Players" (three cards), "Rising Tide" (three cards) and "Big Comeback" (three cards) along with the serially numbered sets "Treasure" (24 cards) and "Esperanza" (15 cards).  The "Treasure" cards may include OB as well as active Eagles players (or managers - both Katsuya Nomura and Senichi Hoshino appear on the cards).  The set will be out in late July.

- BBM's making a change to their annual cheerleader/dance squad set this year.  Instead of issuing the "Dancing Heroine" set in two parts - Hana and Mai - BBM is now just issuing a single set.  But fear not, cheerleader fans, as the base set will include around 180 cards which was roughly the size you'd get when you put both of the previous sets together.  As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Tigers, Giants, Swallows, Dragons, Marines, Hawks, Eagles, Lions and Fighters - I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set.  There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available.  The set will be out in late August.

- Calbee's Series Two set should be hitting the stores any day now.  This is a kind of bittersweet announcement since I was initially excited that Series Two was coming out at its usual time this year after being delayed until August last year.  I was hoping it meant that there'd be a Series Three in September but Sean (who I have to admit was trying to be more optimistic than me about Calbee this year) pointed out that their announcement said that the cards would be on sale through November, long after Series Three should have been released.  So this will probably be the last Calbee set for the year.  Like Series One, Series Two has 60 "regular" player cards (five per team) and six checklist cards.  Instead of the "Title Holder" subset that Series One had, this one has a twelve card "Player's Association President" subset - because what kid doesn't want a card of their favorite team's Union representative.  There's also the usual 24 card "Star" insert set and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" box set available only through Calbee's Amazon Japan store.

- Epoch announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets - the Buffaloes and the Dragons.   The Fighters set will be out on August 3rd and will have 42 cards in its base set - I think two of those are OB players.  The Dragons set will be released on August 10th and also has a base set of 42 cards which includes three OB players (who I think are coaches) and the mascot Doala.  All the base cards have a "holo foil" parallel and both sets have the usual gazillion insert cards that are too numerous to list here.  The Buffaloes set features five different types of player autograph cards - "Authentic", "Star", "Rookie", "Legendary" and "Combo".  The Dragons set has those same five types plus "Dragons Combo Autographs", "Mascot Combo Autographs", "Rookie Combo Autographs" and "1 of 1 Autographs".

- Finally, the latest KBO set from SCC was released last week on June 12th.  I believe they are only being sold at 7-11s in Korea but I don't know that for sure.  The base set contains 140 cards - 13 cards for each of the ten teams in the league plus 10 cards featuring retired players.  There's also a bunch of parallels and autographed cards available.  Dan Skrezyna of Korean Cardboard has put the checklist for the set up at TCDB and he's had a couple Tweets showing examples of the cards.