2024 BBM 2nd Version set

 2024 BBM 2nd Version Set Summary

Size: 332 cards (cards numbered 337-600, the 32 cards of the "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP32 and 36 cards for the "Cross Earth" subset are separately numbered CE37-CE72)
Cards Per Team: 19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme: Early Season Candids
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (32), Cross Earth (36)
Inserts: Star Portraits (12), Fireworks (24), Coming Heroes (24), Combo Cross Foil Signing (13, /10), Treasure (36, /25), Foil Picturesque (12, /15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for rookie Ryuki Watarai, Seiya Yokoyama, Yugo Maeda and Natsuki Takeuchi that are /200 along with patch versions that are /20.  There are two two-player combo jersey cards (Watari/Yokoyama and Maeda/Takeuchi) that are /20 with a patch version that is /5 as well as a combo jersey card featuring all four players that is /10 with a /5 patch version.  (Note that neither Yokoyama nor Maeda appear in the base set.)  There are autographed cards for players that use a landscape version of the "Cross Earth" cards that have print runs between 5 and 30 cards and "Special Autograph" cards autograph cards that are mostly #'d between 3 and 7 although there is a 1-of-1 for Watari.  .  There are autographed versions of 27 of the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards with print runs between 25 and 50 with a silver parallel autographed version that are #'d to 5 or 10.  There are also three players with autograph cards using the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set - these are mostly for players who BBM was not able to include autograph cards in their team set.

Parallels: 12 cards (one per team) have a "Secret" version which is a short printed photo variation.  12 other cards (also one per team) have an "Ultra Secret" version which is an even shorter printed photo variation.  12 addition cards have a "Super Ultra Secret: version which is a yet even more short printed photo variation.  108 of the "regular" and "1st Version Update" cards have nine different parallel versions.  Seven of these are facsimile autographed versions - silver (unnumbered), gold (/100), blue (/75), hologram (/50), red (/25), purple (/10) and sky blue (1-of-1).  The other two parallels are a "glitter" finish on the cards, either gold (/100) or silver (/200).  Each "Cross Earth" card has two parallels - a "holo" version (/100) and a "1 of 1" version.  There are five different parallels for the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards - "heart" (/300), silver (/200), gold (/100), silver holo (/50) and gold holo (/25).  The "Fireworks" inserts have seven parallels - "Gold" (/300), "Green" (/200), "Blue" (/100), "Orange" (/50), "Red" (/25), "Royal Purple" (/10) and "Sky Blue" (1-of-1).  There are four parallels for the "Star Portraits" inserts - "Gold" (/200), "Green" (/100), "Blue" (/50) and "Pink" (/25).  The "Coming Heroes" inserts also have four parallels - "Gold Leaf" (/200), "Light Green Leaf" (/100), "Crinkled Gold Leaf" (/50) and "Light Green Foil" (/25).

Notable Rookies: Natsuki Takeuchi, Ryuki Watarai

The last set in the box I received last week is the 2024 BBM 2nd Version set.  This is the second of BBM's three "flagship" sets, following 1st Version which was released back in April.  This set came out in early August and will be followed by Fusion, the final "flagship" set for the year, in late November (most likely).

This set follows the pattern that BBM's followed for each edition of this set for the past ten years (with the exception of 2020).  The base set contains 300 + n cards where n is the number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards (32 in this instance).  Those 300 cards are split between 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 36 "1st Version Update" cards (three per team), 36 "Cross Whatever" cards ("Cross Earth" this time and again it's three cards per team) and 12 team checklists.  Another way to look at it is that the set contains 25 cards per team - 18 "regular" player cards, three "1st Version Update" cards, three "Cross Earth" cards and a checklist.

I find the design of the regular cards to be just kind of ok.  I don't think I like the big white banner across the bottom of the card that much.  But at least it's kind of transparent.  The photos are decent - BBM typically has the best photo selection of any of the NPB card makers and there's some good shots in the set.  And, as always, the occasional horizontal photo is a big plus in my book.  Here's some examples:

#406

#538

#562

#522

#470

#492

Here's what the backs look like.  They have the player's stats up until May 13th:

#429 (Tomoyuki Sugano)

41 of the 216 players with "regular" cards did not appear in 1st Version.  There's a couple surprises in this list - for example I didn't remember that Livan Moinelo didn't have a card in 1st Version - but I think for the most part these are players who are making more of a contribution to their teams than BBM had initially expected.  Or just couldn't fit into 1st Version since there's only 27 cards per team and each team's entire rookie class has to be included (sorry, this is just something I've whined about for year).  As always I'm not sure why BBM decides to give some players who weren't in 1st Version "regular" 2nd Version cards and others "1st Version Update" cards although I kind of feel like BBM treats the "1st Version Update" cards as more of the "cards of record" for a player so I think they try to put the "bigger" players there.

Which brings us nicely to the "1st Version Update" cards.  As mentioned before, this subset subset contains 36 cards (3 per team) and uses the 2024 1st Version design to feature players who didn't appear in that set.  While lately this subset usually has a bunch of new foreign players who didn't join their team until late in the spring, there's only one this time - Anderson Espinoza of Orix.  Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh is in this subset since he didn't return to the Baystars until early May.  There's several former ikusei players who were registered to their team's 70 man roster this season although none of them were 2023 draftees so none of them have the "rookie" icon on their cards.  There seems to be a number of players who switched teams this past winter such as Neftali Soto, Rei Takahashi, Seiji Uebayashi and Hiroshi Kaino as well as players who again may have contributed more to their teams this year than BBM originally expected like Seiji Kobayashi, Makoto Aduwa and Koki Kitayama.  Here's some example cards:

#345

#351

#360

One change in this subset from previous editions of this set is that the backs of the cards have the player's 2024 stats up to May 13th.  In the past the stats on the backs of the cards stopped at the previous year.

I'm describing the theme for the team cards as "Early Season Highlights" but that's kind of a broad term.  Many of the cards show post game celebrations but several are obviously pre-game (the Marines card shows Roki Sasaki coming out of the dugout during the pre-game introductions while I think the Eagles card shows the team lined up on the field for Opening Night).  I'm not entirely sure what's happening on the Tigers card but I like the photo:

#589

For the roughly billionth year in a row, BBM has done a cross set subset and this year's iteration is called "Cross Earth".  Half of it was in the 1st Version set and the other half is in this one.  As I said when I wrote about it in my post on the 1st Version set, the "Cross Earth" cards aren't unattractive but I'm more than ready for BBM to move onto the their next gimmick.

#CE71

The set contains 32 "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards which I think is the most ever.  This subset has been short-printed ever since 2021 and getting it with the rest of the set probably doubled the amount I paid for the set.  As usual most of the people in the subset are Japanese celebrities who have no relationship to baseball although there's one former player - Hideki Matsui.  Figuring out who the other celebrities are is aways kind of interesting.  There's a bunch of comedians (Mikio Date of Sandwich Man, Kikuo Hayashiya and Yumiko Ishihara of Chitty Chitty Johnny), singers (Maki Watase of LINDBERG, Maria Makino of Morning Musume and Nanase Aikawa), a voice actress (Natsumi Fujiwara) and an announcer (Aika Kanda).  There's one actor (Toshiro Yanagiba), three actresses (Michiko Kichise, Wakana Matsumoto and Karin Tsuji) and two kabuki actors (Maholo Onoe and Koshiro Matsuyama).  There's the usual collection of Idols - Risa Yukihira, Rino Ichinose and Kanami Tsujino as well as Airin Hosokawa, daughter of former NPB player Toru Hosokawa.  There's also a "talent" (Tatsunori Tsujimoto) and an "infuencer" (Unparunpa).  The remaining subjects are all athletes of one form or another.  There's three pro wrestlers (Hiroshi Tanahashi, Yota Tsuji and Mayu Iwatani), a jockey (Nanako Fujita), a cyclist (Mao Ogata), a boat racer (Takayuki Ishino) and a "bikini fitness" participant (Yuri Yasui).  There are two competitors from this year's Paris Olympics - Cocona Hiraki who won the silver medal for women's skateboarding and rugby player Chiharu Nakamura - along with two previous Olympians - Javelin thrower Genki Dean (2012 London) and volleyball player Saori Kimura (2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing, 2012 London where the team won bronze and 2016 Rio).

Several of the people featured in this subset have appeared in previous editions of it - Matsui (2013 and 2023 2nd Version), Matsumoto (2023 Fusion), Yukihira (2023 2nd Version & Fusion), Fujita (2018 2nd Version), Tanahashi (2019 2nd Version), Aikawa (2023 2nd Version).  Maria Makino is making her FIFTH appearance on one of these cards after previously being in the 2017 2nd Version, 2018 2nd Version, 2019 Fusion and 2021 2nd Version sets.  This breaks the tie she had had with Ruriko Kojima and Sadako for the second most "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards athough she's still far behind Ami Inamura's 14.

Here's the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards for Makino and Matsui:

#FP31

#FP23

I was kind of amused and happy at the inclusion of "influencer" Uparunpa because I was at the game he threw the first pitch at - the Tigers - Dragons game at Nagoya Dome on May 15th.  Here's my photos of him followed by his card:

#FP29

As usual, you can see all the cards from the set over at Jambalaya.

Card Shops In Japan: Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

I've mentioned before that the distribution of baseball card shops in Japan seems to be very lopsided, with more than half of the shops that I know about being located in Kanto.  There are only four that I know of in Kansai - the antique toy store Kinkys and three Mint stores - Mints Umeda and Daimaru Shinsaibashi in Osaka and Mint Sannomiya in Kobe.  I've not been to Kobe so I haven't been to that store but I like Mint Umeda despite it not really being a good set building show.  Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi had opened since my previous trip to Japan so I decided to take a look at it when I was in Osaka back in May of this year.

As the name implies, the shop is located inside Daimaru Shinsaibashi which is a department store located on Midosuji Avenue in the Chuo ward of Osaka, just five or six blocks north of Dotonbori canal.  The shop is on the ninth floor of the store.

I'll be honest here - this really isn't my kind of store.  It's definitely in the  "Mall Shops with only hits" category.  There were unopened boxes and packs of recent stuff and a lot of expensive cards lining the walls and cases.  I didn't see any singles from recent sets or boxes of random cards to pick through although I won't swear they weren't there.  I did a quick walk through the store so it's possible I missed something.   

Like Mint Shinjuku, there's nothing wrong with this kind of store if all you're looking for are unopened boxes and hits.  It's just not what I'm looking for from a store.  I wouldn't say I was disappointed with the store, though, as it was pretty much exactly what I expected from it.

Here's a map showing the location of the shop:

2024 BBM Eagles

2024 is the twentieth season that the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have been around and BBM is commemorating the occasion in a somewhat unique way.  Instead of issuing a stand-alone "Twentieth Anniversary" set (like they did for the team's tenth anniversary ten years ago), BBM basically appended a "Twentieth Anniversary" mini-set onto their annual Eagles team set this year.  

BBM's annual "comprehensive" team sets* have had base sets of 81 cards for ten years now with this being the first exception**.  This set has 117 cards with the first 81 cards being basically the standard team set and the remaining 36 cards being the "Twentieth Anniversary" mini-set.

*A "comprehensive" team set contains cards for all the players on the team's 70 man roster at the time the set went to press.

**I guess more accurately I'd say that this is the first team set that was intended to depart from the 81 card size since 2014.  There've been a couple sets that have only 80 cards because of a player leaving a team after the checklist being set but before the cards were published - BBM has pulled the card from the set but not replaced it in the checklist.

Let's dive into the standard team set portion first.  The bulk of those 81 cards are the 66 cards for manager Toshiaki Imae and all the players on the team's 70 man roster (which is apparently five players short of being full).  Normally this is the point in the post when I would talk about who's in the set and who's missing but that seems kind of silly here - the set contains everyone on the Eagles' roster and there's nobody missing.

The photos for BBM's "comprehensive" team sets are usually a mixed bag and this set is no different.  There are a lots of "batters batting, pitchers pitching" poses.  I'm generally a little more forgiving with these sets than I am of the flagship sets though and there's a handful of decent photos in this set.  There's also a couple cards that use a horizontal format which I'm very partial to.  Here's some examples - I really like the Takahisa Hayakawa photo:

#E009

#E041

#E044

#E050

#E007

The remaining 15 cards of the standard team set portion are split up into five subsets that really don't serve any purpose other than to pad the set out to 81 cards.  There's a single card to celebrate the Eagles winning interleague this year; a two card "Brightest Hope" subset featuring rookies Tatsuki Koja and Daisuke Nakashima; a five card "Break The Limit" subset featuring pitchers Takayuki Kishi, Takahiro Norimoto, Kosei Shoji, Hayakawa and Seiryu Uchi; a five card "Unstoppable" subset featuring batters Hiroto Kobukata, Hideto Asamura, Itsuki Murabayashi, Ryosuke Tatsumi, and Yuya Ogoh; and a two card "Record Makers" subset featuring Masahiro Tanaka and Hiroaki Shimauchi.  Here's examples of all of these cards:

#E067

#E068

#E071

#E076

#E081

Moving on to the "Twentieth Anniversary" mini-set, half of it is cards of OB players from the Eagles along with three of the team's former managers.  The players are Ginji (Akaminai), Koji Aoyama, Kazuya Fujita, Hiroyuki Fukuyama, Ryo Hijirisawa, Koichi Isobe, Hisashi Iwakuma, Shinichiro Koyama, Daisuke Kusano, Yuki Matsui, Motohiro Shima, Yosuke Takasu, Teppei (Tsuchiya), Naoto Watanabe and Takeshi Yamasaki.  The three managers are Yasushi Tao (the team's first manager), Katsuya Nomura (who led them to their first post-season appearance in 2009) and Senichi Hoshino (who led them to their only Nippon Series Championship in 2013).  I think Matsui is the only OB player who's still active somewhere else.

18 players (well, 15, really) is a small number to try to represent twenty years of history so there's any number of additional players who could have been included - Kazuo Fukumori, Kazuo Matsui, Jose Fernandez and Andruw Jones all come to mind.  But given the constraints of the set, BBM probably did as well as they could.

The card design for the OB cards is pretty much the same as the player cards in the standard team set portion of the set.  Again, there's a couple decent photos but most of them are pretty run-of-the-mill.  Here's a couple examples:

#E091

#E095

#E082

#E090

The mini-set also contains nine cards for the Eagles career leaders in various categories.  This is a little misleading as there are nine different players represented but some of the players aren't the leader in the category they're on the card with.  For example, Asamura is on the RBI card but he's actually fourth on the list - Yamasaki's number one on the list but he's on the home run card.  Hiroaki Shimauchi is number two on the RBI list but he's on the hits card.  Of course, he's second on that list too but number one is Ginji who's on the batting average card.  You get the idea.  Here's Yamasaki's card as an example:

#E102

The next six cards in the mini-set are reprints of the BBM 1st Version rookie cards of some significant Eagles players - Ginji (2006), Motohiro Shima (2007), Masahiro Tanaka (2007), Takero Okajima (2012), Takahiro Norimoto (2013) and Yuki Matsui (2014).  Here's Matsui's card:

#114

The final three cards in the set are highlights from the past 20 years.  That's right, according to BBM, the Eagles have only had three highlights since 2005.  Those highlights are them winning their first ever game (but let's not talk about their second game), Tanaka going 24-0 in 2013 and the Eagles winning the Nippon Series a month later.  I mean, the Eagles have not been a great team but they have made the playoffs five times in 19 previous seasons - maybe add one of those to the list?  Here's the card for Tanaka - he's got five total cards in the set:

#E116

I'm not sure what to say about this set.  For me, I don't mind the merging of the historic set with the annual team set as I would have bought both of them if they were separate but I could see someone who only wanted a team set or a historic set but not both being kind of irritated.  The team set portion is fine - it's pretty much what you'd expect from a BBM team set.  The historic part is...OK.  I think they could have cut back or dropped the team leaders subset and added more OB players and/or highlights but other than that, it's passable.  I'm guessing that this means BBM isn't going to be doing an "Eagles History 2005-2024" set like the similarly named sets they've done for the Carp, Giants, Dragons, Marines, Tigers, Buffaloes, Swallows, Hawks and Lions since 2020.

As always, you can see all the cards (including inserts and parallels) over at Jambalaya.

2024 Calbee Series Two

Calbee initially announced that this year's Series Two set would be released at the end of June but it actually wasn't until late July that the cards started showing up in stores.  It was just one more in a line of odd things that I feel has plagued Calbee's releases over the past two years with last year's Series Two getting delayed until August, Series Three being cancelled altogether and the oddball Hawks set apparently also being delayed by a few months.  Not to mention the distribution issues that prevented people from being able to find the chip bags for last year's Series One in stores for a while.  Then there's all the errors with Series One this year - "Kaiju" Itoh, the sparkle-less Star and Legend cards and the misprint on the chip bags themselves. 

But enough about that, let's talk about the cards.  The set contains 60 "regular" player cards, 12 "Player's Association President" cards and six checklist cards for a total of 78 cards.  This makes it one of the smallest Calbee sets in recent memory - the only smaller one I can think of was last year's Series Two set since it only had four checklist cards.

The 60 "regular" player cards are numbered 61-120 in continuation of the numbering from the Series One set.  The cards continue the same design that Series One used, with the player names in Japanese one them (the Calbee standard for even-numbered years since 2016).  

In my post about Series One, I had mentioned that it didn't have "regular" player cards for a number of NPB's biggest stars such as Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Maki, Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Roki Sasaki and Munetaka Murakami.  Series Two makes up for this a little with cards for Murakami and Sasaki but the other four are still missing.  With Series Two likely being the final Calbee baseball set for 2024, it means that there will be no "regular" Calbee cards for Okamoto, Maki, Yanagita and Kondoh this year (and this will make it the second year in row that Kondoh doesn't have a "regular" Calbee card).

Besides the afore-mentioned Sasaki and Murakami, the big names in the set are probably Chusei Mannami, Takeya Nakamura, Koji Chikamoto, Tomoya Mori, Teruaki Satoh and Hayato Sakamoto.  Unlike Series One, Series Two contains players who changed teams over the winter like Yuito Mori, Hiroski Kaino, Ryoma Nishikawa and Hotoka Yamakawa and a couple rookies - Ryuki Watarari and Shunsuke Sasaki.  There's also a fair number of Western players including Gregory Polanco, Adam Walker, Ariel Martinez, Sheldon Neuse and Cy Sneed.

I usually beat up on Calbee a lot for their photo selection being pretty dull and this set gives me no reason to stop.  For the most part, it's the usual collection of dull "pitchers pitching, batters batting" poses without even a single "catchers catching" shot.  On the plus side, there is one horizontal oriented card to break up the monotony a little and Watarai's photo is pretty good.  And I will repeat my comment from Series One that despite the dull photos, the cards themselves look good.  Here's some example cards:

#099 Roki Sasaki

#084 Munetaka Murakami

#061 Shota Morishita

#103 Adam Walker

#071 Ryuki Watarai

#118 Kenya Suzuki

If it wasn't clear, I'm somewhat puzzled by the decisions that Calbee made on player selection for this set.  I'm also puzzled by the theme of the one subset.  It's getting translated as something like "Player's Association President" in the set's checklist although the text on the card itself translates as "Player Chairman".  I think these are each team's representative to the Player's Association.  While I am a firm supporter of organized labor, I think it's kind of an odd theme for a subset.  The subset includes cards for players like Ukyo Shuto, Yutaro Sugimoto and Shota Tonosaki.  The cards themselves have kind of an ugly design with big triangles taking up the upper left and lower right corners of the card.  The photos are all pretty dull, continuing the "pitchers pitching, batters batting" theme.  Here's the card for Dragons rep Yuya Yanagi as an example:

#PL-06

The backs of the cards have each team's ichi-gun Opening Day roster which seems somewhat unrelated to the fronts of the cards so it's another oddity about the set:

#PL-06

The six checklist cards also continue the numbering established in Series One.  They're numbered C-07 to C-12.  The cards all feature events from the first week or so of the season - the first victories for new managers Shinnosuke Abe and Toshiaki Imae; Norichika Aoki getting his 2,706 NPB-MLB hit, moving him into fifth place all time; Hideaki Wakui getting his 2000th strikeout; Natsuki Takeuchi getting his first win and Chusei Mannami hitting the 100th home run at the Fighters new stadium.  Usually the checklist cards have some of the better photos in Calbee's sets but I feel like they picked the dullest shots for this set.  Four of the cards (Abe, Wakui, Imae and Takeuchi) just show the player (or manager) basking in the post-game recognition of their honor and the Aoki card shows him just holding up his hands at first base (although admittedly that might be a better photo than that of almost all the "regular" player cards).  I think the only checklist card with a photo I like is the Mannami one:

#C-12

You can take a look at all of the cards over at Jambalaya and decided for yourself if I'm being too picky about the set.  As I said, I'm somewhat puzzled by it as well as kind of disappointed again.

Card Of The Week August 25

The Twitter account for the Australian National Baseball Team (@TeamAusBasaeball)  has been recapping the team's performance during the 2004 Athens Olympics on the twentieth anniversary of each game.  Today was the twentieth anniversary of the Gold Medal game from that competition where Australia ended up losing to Cuba 6-2 and took the Silver Medal.  This has been the high point for Australia in international baseball and came at the expensive of an absolutely stacked Japanese team.  I've written about the 2004 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team and the Athens competition before so I won't repeat myself other than to point out that Australia was the only team who beat Japan in those Olympics.  They beat them 9-3 in pool play and then Chris Oxspring out-dueled Daisuke Matsuzaka 1-0 in the semi-final game to put the Aussies in the final against Cuba.  Relief pitcher Jeff Williams who was a member of the Hanshin Tigers at the time was instrumental in shutting down the Japanese offense in the late innings of both games.

Today was also the anniversary of the Bronze Medal game where Japan took out their frustrations on the Canadians 11-2.  What I found interesting about the Gold and Bronze Medal games is that there are two players who appeared those games who are still active twenty years later!  Tsuyoshi Wada of the Hawks was the starting pitcher for Japan that day and Yuli Gurriel, currently playing in Triple-A in Atlanta's organization, was Cuba's second baseman.  Ten years later, Gurriel would play 62 games with the Yokohama DeNA Baystars and would sign a contract to play with them again in 2015, only to somewhat mysteriously refuse to report to Japan.  Here's cards of both Wada and Gurriel:

2023 BBM 1st Version #031

2014 Calbee Series Three #242

Some other quick notes - 2004 was the first time Japan sent an all professional team to the Olympic.  It was also the last time Cuba took Gold - they'd lose to South Korea in the finals in 2008 and were not involved in the 2021 Tokyo Games.  And amazingly, there's a player from the 2000 Sydney Games who's still active - Masanori Ishikawa of the Swallows.

2024 Epoch NPB set

Another set that I received in the box from ZenMarket earlier this week was the 2024 Epoch NPB set.  This is the seventh edition of Epoch's flagship set and it's a bit of a departure from the previous ones.  The big difference is that the set has dropped considerably in size.  All of the previous sets were either 432 or 444 cards which worked out to 36 players per team along with a 12 card "Legendary Players" subset (not every set had the "Legendary Player" subset which is why some of them were 432 cards while the ones with the subset were 444).  This year's set is only 348 cards, a drop of over 20%.  

The set once again has a 12 card "Legendary Player" subset which leave 336 cards for active players.  That breaks down to 28 cards per team which is one more card per team than BBM had in their 1st Version set.  I don't think that's a coincidence as one of Epoch's selling points is that they had more players in their set than BBM did.  (Of course, BBM's "flagship" is actually three sets - 1st Version, 2nd Version and Fusion - so taken as a whole, BBM's got more players,)

As you'd expect, the set all the big names - Munetaka Murakami,, Roki Sasaki, Kazuma Okamoto, Chusei Mannami, Kensuke Kondoh, etc.  Each team's entire rookie class (2023 draft class - regular phase only, not development players) is also included which takes up a fairly large percentage of each team's checklist (and more so now when it's out of 28 cards instead of 36).  There's 70 players who appear in this set but not BBM's 1st Version set.  The biggest names are probably Ryuhei Sotani, Shion Mastsuo and Rei Takahashi along with foreign players Neftali Soto and Cy Sneed (although all of those guys appear in BBM's 2nd Version set).  There's 58 guys who are in 1st Version but not this set.  The bulk of the missing players appear to be foreign players old (Ariel Martinez, Marwin Gonzalez), new (Franmil Reyels, Jesus Aguilar) and on new teams (Cody Ponce, Kyle Keller).  There's a few other players that kind of surprised me that were missing - Yudai Ohno, Hideaki Wakui and Hotoka Yamakawa.  It was the absence of Yamakawa that really concerned me as I worried that Epoch was doing the same thing I complained about Topps doing - ignoring players who changed teams over the winter.  It turned out to be a needless worry as there's any number of other players who changed teams over the winter who are in the set such as Sachiya Yamasaki, Sho Nakata, the afore-mentioned Takahashi, Yuito Mori and Haruki Nishikawa.  

The cards themselves are very attractive.  I'm very partial to borderless designs and this is the first Epoch NPB set to not have borders.  The photos are a mixed bag which is pretty typical for an Epoch set but there are some nice shots which I think are enhanced by the borderless design.  Here's some examples:

#217

#159

#036

#321

#288

#268

#101

An odd thing about the set is that, like last year, some of the photos Epoch used for non-rookie players were studio shots - posed photographs in front of a white background.  There were three players (Kosei Yoshida, Ryoma Nishikawa and Ginjiro Sumitani) and two managers (Tsuyoshi Shinjyo and Satoshi Nakajima) who had cards like this.   All three players were with new teams so maybe that's why but it doesn't explain why they used studio shots for Shinjyo and Nakajima.  

On a similar line, I found it odd that Epoch used a photo of Hiroki Kokubo from the press conference when he was announced as the new Hawks manager rather than a photo of him in uniform like was used for the other two new managers - Shinnosuke Abe of the Giants and Toshiaki Imae of the Eagles:

#225

The card backs are pretty much the same as in every other Epoch flagship set - biographical information, some text and the last three years worth of stats:

#130 (Munetaka Murakami)

I mentioned earlier that Yamakawa being left out of the set had worried me that Topps' laziness was having a negative effect on other card manufacturers (OK, maybe you have to read between the lines a little to reach that conclusion).  While my fears about Yamakawa are probably unfounded, there is an aspect to this set that I fear has been negatively impacted by Topps - how the set handles the rookie cards.

In the previous sets, Epoch has mostly treated the photos on the rookie cards that same way BBM does - on field shots showing the player in practice or in a game.  Topps, however, the past two years has featured photos from press conferences or studio shots on their rookie cards.  For this set, Epoch has done what Topps has been doing for the rookie cards of about three quarters of the teams.

The rookie cards for four of the teams (Hawks, Fighters, Buffaloes and Lions) have studio photos taken in front of a white background:

#190

Three of the teams (Marines, Eagles and Baystars) use photos from what I think are the introductory press conference for the rookie class:

#079

The Dragons and Tigers rookie cards have the player posed in front of the team's flag (the photos were probably also taken at the team's rookie class introductory press conference):

#023

The remaining three teams (Carp, Swallows and Giants) all used the "traditional" on-field photos (with one exception on the Carp):

#140

It's a minor thing but it kind of bothers me.  I think it's a bit more interesting to see the rookie players in action on the field rather than posing at a press conference.  Especially since the poses all kind of look the same after a while.  

Last and least (in my opinion anyway) is the "Legendary Players" subset.  I feel like these were thrown into the set to give an excuse to have autographed cards of the players available in the packs for the set.  The twelve OB players featured always seem kind of random.  There's one player from each team and this year's group includes Masahiro Yamamoto, Michihiro Ogasawara, Hideki Okajima and Yoshio Itoi.  The card design for the OB cards is exactly the same as for the "regular" player cards:

#348

Despite my misgivings about the possibility of Topps influencing the way Epoch is doing rookie cards, I do like this set quite a bit.  I just wish it was still the size that the previous sets were.

As usual, you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.