- I swear to God that both BBM and Epoch are going out of their ways to tempt me back into buying new sets. First BBM announces that crazy high school girl's baseball team box set with Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka which is just the kind of oddball set that I love and then Epoch announces what is apparently the first ever OB Samurai Japan set. The official title of it is "Japan Professional Baseball OB Club Official Card Japan National Baseball Team Career Achievement 2024 Card Set". It's being done with the OB Club but it's not one of their ultra-high end sets. It's a 25 card box set with each box containing the 23 card base set, one parallel card and one autographed card. The guarantee of an autographed card will make the price of the set a little on the high side but there's no listing of a price yet. The base set contains cards of retired players who played for the professional versions of either the Japanese National Team or Samurai Japan (as the team was called after the 2013 WBC) such as Hisashi Iwakuma, Akinori Iwamura, Seiichi Uchikawa, Michihiro Ogasawara and Nobuhiro Matsuda. It also includes former team managers Sadaharu Oh and Hideki Kuriyama. (To be honest, I'd be a lot more interested in this set if it included cards of former professional players who played on the national team as amateurs. I mean, how cool would it be to have cards of Hideo Nomo and Atsuya Furuta from the 1988 Olympic team? As far as I can tell, all the guys in this set have appeared on a national team set from Topps, Calbee, BBM or Upper Deck in the past). From the name of the set, I assume Epoch had intended to publish the set in 2024 but delayed it for some reason. I'd be curious if this means that Epoch now has the rights to do Samurai Japan cards which would explain why Topps has not released the team set for the Premier 12 squad that I was expecting. It'll be out on March 22nd.
- Also coming out on March 22nd is Epoch's delayed 2024 edition of their "Holographica" set. This is another collaboration between Epoch and the OB Club but, unlike the National Team set, it IS one of their ultra high-end sets. Each six card box retails for 16,500 yen (about $105) and I think are guaranteed to include two autographed cards. There are 61 cards in the base set, each with a parallel version, and something like seven different varieties of autographed cards. Players in the set include Sadaharu Oh, Hideki Matsui, Koji Uehara, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hisashi Yamada and Yuki Saitoh.
- "216 Co., Ltd." (aka "Hits" and "TIC") will be releasing their annual "mini shikishi" card set for the Hawks on March 29th. There's 32 oversized cards available - 16 "normal" and 16 "special with foil autograph". There's 16 players listed so everyone has a "normal" and a "special" card. I think there are real autographs available as well.
- BBM's annual set for retiring players will be out in late February. Once again the set will not only include baseball players but retiring athletes in other sports including badminton, swimming, soccer and judo. The set is sold as a 34 card box set. Each box will include the entire 32 card base set plus two other cards which could both be autographed cards although I think it will more likely be an insert card and an autographed card. The set includes baseball players like Tsuyoshi Wada, Norichika Aoki and Takayuki Kajimoto. It also includes a card for long time corporate league player Katsutoshi Satake, who's played for Toyota since graduating from Waseda in 2006.
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