- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on August 17th. This year's edition will have 42 cards - a 39 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card. The base set is made up of all of last falls draftees from the six Pacific League teams with the biggest name being Natsuki Takeuchi of the Lions. There are three types of autographed cards available of all 39 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.
- Epoch has also announced the first two 2024 entries in their ultra-high-end combination active/OB player team sets called "Stars & Legends". The Hawks set will be released on September 14th while the Tigers set will be out on September 21st. Boxes for each set contain four cards and will retail for 18,700 yen (about $122). The "base set" (and I use the term loosely here) for each set contains 57 serially numbered cards split between active and OB players (and managers) for the teams. Both sets will also include three different types of "Decomori Signature" insert cards (I assume those are facsimile signatures) - Gold (/25), Green (/5) and Hologram (1-of-1). There are six of each flavor. There are also six GEM insert cards (that are serially numbered but I don't know the count) and six BLACK GEM insert cards (/5). Both sets will have a variety of autographed cards. Both sets have "Authentic", "Star", "Legendary", "Baseball" and "Combo" autographs while the Hawks set will also have "Rookie" and "Triple" autographs.
- NPB is celebrating the 90th anniversary of professional baseball in Japan this year (which isn't really accurate as there were some professional teams in Japan during the 1920's if I'm recalling what Jim Allen has said correctly). BBM is getting in on the festivities by publishing a "Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary" set in mid-October. This will be a pack-based set with a 144 card base set. That base set will be divided into 108 "regular" cards (don't know if they'll be split evenly among the 12 NPB teams or not), 18 "Famous Scene" cards (including Shigeo Nagashima's retirement game and Sadaharu Oh's 756th home run), nine "Famous Duo/Trio" cards (multiplayer cards) and nine cards for famous managers (including older ones like Kazuto Tsuruoka, Osamu Mihara and Shigeru Mizuhara). I think it's kind of cool that there are three different nine card "Best 9" insert sets - one for each Imperial period since 1934 - Showa, Heisei and Reiwa. There's also a 12 card "Nicknames/Catchphrases" insert set along with the premium "Treasure" insert set (which also has 12 cards). There are, of course, a number of autograph cards available. BBM is advertising that they'll have their first cut-autograph ever available with this set - it'll be of the late Masaichi Kaneda. Kaneda is not the only deceased player who will have autographed cards with the set - Shigeru Sugishita, Choji Murata and Manabu Kittabeppu are also being touted as being available.
- Infinity, BBM's annual multi-sport set, will be released in late October. BBM hasn't released much information about the set yet so I can't tell you how big the base set is. As usual, it looks like the bulk of the athletes in the set are active and retired baseball players such as Sadaharu Oh, Atsunori Inaba, Hiroki Kokubo, Hayato Sakamoto and Munetaka Murakami. The other athletes in the set are from rugby, basketball, volleyball, handball, table tennis, curling, karate, boxing, drone racing and parkour. For the first time, there will be facsimile signature parallels available for all the regular cards. There will also be plastic insert cards called "Lucent", some sort of metal inserts and the premium Treasure inserts.
- The 2024 SCC KBO Rainbow set will hit the shelves on the 26th, two days from now (well, actually, tomorrow in Korea). Dan Skrezyna of Korean Cardboard has, as usual, provided all the details on Twitter. The base set has 126 cards and I think there's a number of different insert cards - "Rookie" (46 cards and it has five parallels including a 1-of-1), "Limited" (40 cards), "Pairing" (30 cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (1 card). There's also 116 sticker autographs (which are not serially numbered) and 46 on-card autographs (/15). I don't know if it's a coincidence that there's the same number of "Rookie" cards and on-card autographed cards but I suspect it is not. Dan has put the base set checklist up at TCDB and I suspect he'll update the listings with the inserts and autograph cards when he gets the information in.
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