- BBM puts out a box set called Icons with a different theme every March and this year's theme is "Prospect". As usual, each box will contain 37 cards - a 36 card base set plus one "special insert card". The base set contains three "young players" per team including 2024 Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Natsuki Taneuchi along with Ryuki Watarai. At least seven of the first round picks from the 2024 draft will also be in the set. The "special insert card" could be be a "foil print" card, an "EXTREME2025" rookie card (only available for the seven 2024 first round picks), a "Foil Autograph" card (only available for the three Giants players) or a "Handwritten autograph" card (which will not include any Giants players). There are parallel versions of the "foil print" and "EXTREME2025" cards. The set will be out in late March.
- The first installment of BBM's annual flagship set - 1st Version - is scheduled to be released in early May, which is a little later than normal. Everything else about the set, though, is pretty much the same as it's been the past eleven years. There's the usual 324 player/manager cards (27 for each team), the 12 team checklist cards and the 36 "Cross Something" cards that will be continued in the 2nd Version set later in the year - this year the Something is "Ocean". That makes a total of 372 cards in the base set. Nine cards for each team have several different facsimile autograph parallels. There are also parallel versions for 69 of the rookie cards (or all the rookie cards). There are three varieties of short printed photo variants - each team has a card with a rare "secret" version, a card with a rarer "ultra secret" version and a card with an even rarer "super ultra secret" version (and they could all possibly be variants for the same player). There are two non-premium insert sets - "Ultra Hope" (12 cards - one per team) and "Japonism" (12 cards - one per team) - and three serially numbered premium insert sets - "Amazing" (24 /50 cards - two per team), "Cross Foil Signing" (6 cards - all members of the Giants) and "3D Cross Ocean" (12 /25 cards - one per team as you probably guessed). Some of the insert sets will probably have parallel versions but I don't see anything about them yet. There are both autograph and memorabilia cards available, including cards with multiple autographs and cards with memorabilia from multiple players. There will also be "buyback" autographs available.
- BBM has announced the first three of their annual "comprehensive" team sets. Each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set. Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet. The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Eminent. There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.
| Release Date | Team | Regular Cards | Subsets | Non-Premium Inserts | Treasure | Esperanza | Eminent | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early April | Swallows | 66 | Munetaka Murakami History(6), Types Of Smiles(3), Break Candidates(3), Kuruinpa(3) | Core Players(9), Diamond Rough Stones(6), Rookies(3) | 24 | 15 | Autograph cards | |
| Mid April | Marines | 69 | Newcomer(2), Promising Young Player(4), Starting Pillars(3), Reliable Veterans(3) | Main Players(9), Young Pitchers(2), Midfielders(4), New Players(3) | 24 | 15 | Autograph cards | |
| Late April | Eagles | 69 | Hideto Asamura Milestone(2), Rui Muneyama Special(3), Team Faces(3), Combination(4) | Core Players(9), Powerful Relief(3), Promising Young Pitchers(3), Rookies(3) | 17 | 15 | 12 | Autograph cards |
- Bushiroad is continuing with their DreamOrder collectible game cards that they introduced last year. They've announced expansion packs for eight teams. Each pack is 500 yen and contains five cards. I'm a little confused on what cards are available in the packs but it appears for each team there's some number (between 10 and 16) of "super rare" (SR) cards, ten "rare" cards and thirty "common" cards. I think that some of the cards are "reprints" which I assume means they're essentially duplicates of cards that were previously issued. There are also parallel and "special" parallel cards. OB players are available as well as active players (although I'm not sure if they're only in the "special" parallel cards which really wouldn't make much sense). The Giants and Tigers packs will be released on March 22nd, the Buffaloes and Lions packs will be out on April 12th, the Dragons and Carp packs will come out on April 26th and the Hawks and Eagles packs will be released on May 10th. I assume there will be packs for the other four teams - the Marines, Fighters, Swallows and Baystars - later in the year.
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