Japanese Baseball Cards: Epoch One Draft Pick Cards

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Epoch One Draft Pick Cards

Epoch started doing their on-demand Epoch One cards in 2018 and for several years after that, they included cards of that year's draft picks for a few teams. What's significant about this is that these were the first draft pick cards in Japan to be issued in the same year as the draft. BBM's annual draft pick set - Rookie Edition - usually comes out in February or March of the following year, several months after the draft itself happens in late October or November. Rookie Edition will use photos of the players from the each team's press conference in November or December to introduce the new players which is why the photos are always kind of boring. What this has meant is that the first cards of a drafted player are in the year AFTER the player was drafted. For example, Shohei Ohtani was taken by the Fighters in the first round of the 2012 draft but his first baseball card wasn't issued until 2013.

But for four of the first five years that Epoch did the Epoch One cards, they issued draft pick cards for a handful of teams the same year that the players were drafted (or at least the cards had the same "cover date" - we'll get into that more in a minute). For example, Akira Neo was the first pick of the Dragons in the 2018 draft and his first baseball card is a 2018 Epoch One card instead of a 2019 BBM Rookie Edition card.

Epoch only did draft pick cards for the Dragons in the 2018 set and then did both the Swallows and Dragons in 2019. They again only did the Dragons in 2020 and didn't have any draft pick cards in 2021. Epoch went somewhat overboard in 2022, issuing cards for the draft picks for six teams total - the Dragons, Swallows, Giants, Fighters, Baystars and Marines. While all these cards have a "cover date" of 2022 (actually on the back of the card), the cards of the Giants, Fighters, Baystars and Marines were not actually issued until early 2023.

Epoch would not do draft pick cards in 2023 but would bring them back in 2024. However, the 2024 cards were for the 2023 draft picks. They've continued this in 2025, issuing cards this month for the 2024 draft picks. Personally, I find this much less interesting than the earlier cards. I have all the Epoch One draft pick cards from 2018 to 2022 but I didn't get any of them from last year's set.

Here's the list of all the draft pick cards that Epoch issued in the same year as the draft. The "Date" column is the date that the photo was taken - usually this is the team's introductory press conference but there's a couple oddballs from the 2022 cards.

Year	Team	Player	Round	Card	Date	Print Run
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Akira Neo	1	675	December 8	877
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Kodai Umetsu	2	676	December 8	123
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Akiyoshi Katsuno	3	677	December 8	46
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Kota Ishibashi	4	678	December 8	48
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Kenshin Kakikoshi	5	679	December 8	39
2018	Chunichi Dragons	Kaname Takino	6	680	December 8	35
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Yasuobu Okugawa	1	746	December 3	284
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Daiki Yoshida	2	747	December 3	41
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Koki Sugiyama	3	748	December 3	36
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Hiroki Ohnishi	4	749	December 3	37
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Hideki Nagaoka	5	750	December 3	41
2019	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Ryusei Takeoka	6	751	December 3	51
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Takaya Ishikawa	1	752	December 16	197
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Yuki Hashimoto	2	753	December 16	44
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Yuichiro Okano	3	754	December 16	34
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Yuya Gunji	4	755	December 16	55
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Yuki Okabayashi	5	756	December 16	42
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Ryushin Takeuchi	6	757	December 16	40
2019	Chunichi Dragons	Hiroaki Matsuda	1 (ikusei)	758	December 16	49
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Hiroto Takahashi	1	669	December 11	91
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Hiroto Mori	2	670	December 11	30
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Ryuku Tsuchida	3	671	December 11	38
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Shota Fukushima	4	672	December 11	28
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Tsubasa Katoh	5	673	December 11	31
2020	Chunichi Dragons	Hironori Miyoshi	6	674	December 11	32
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Reia Nakachi	1	988	December 1	75
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Kaito Muramatsu	2	989	December 1	63
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Akio Moriyama	3	990	December 1	33
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Ryunosuke Yamaasa	4	991	December 1	33
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Shonosuke Hama	5	992	December 1	62
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Mikiya Tanaka	6	993	December 1	62
2022	Chunichi Dragons	Hiroki Fukunaga	7	994	December 1	41
2022	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Kojiro Yoshimura	1	1004	December 6	63
2022	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Ruito Nishimura	2	1005	December 6	60
2022	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Ren Sawai	3	1006	December 6	53
2022	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Takumi Sakamoto	4	1007	December 6	40
2022	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Keigo Kitamura	5	1008	December 6	37
2022	Yomiuri Giants	Shogo Asano	1	1016	November 23	265
2022	Yomiuri Giants	Masaya Hagio	2	1017	November 23	80
2022	Yomiuri Giants	Chiharu Tanaka	3	1018	November 29	46
2022	Yomiuri Giants	Makoto Kadowaki	4	1019	November 23	61
2022	Yomiuri Giants	Hiromasa Funabasama	5	1020	November 29	62
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Kota Yazawa	1	1023	November 26	117
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Shoma Kanemura	2	1024	November 26	31
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Gosuke Katoh	3	1025	November 4	105
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Kanato Anzai	4	1026	November 26	30
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Taiki Narama	5	1027	November 26	38
2022	Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters	Haruki Miyauchi	6	1028	November 26	27
2022	Yokohama DeNA Baystars	Shion Matsuo	1	1030	November 27	136
2022	Yokohama DeNA Baystars	Teruki Yoshino	2	1031	November 27	40
2022	Yokohama DeNA Baystars	Takuma Hayashi	3	1032	November 27	38
2022	Yokohama DeNA Baystars	Ryudai Morishita	4	1033	November 27	36
2022	Yokohama DeNA Baystars	Tatsuya Hashimoto	5	1034	November 27	51
2022	Chiba Lotte Marines	Riku Kikuchi	1	1035	December 7	65
2022	Chiba Lotte Marines	Atsuki Tomosugi	2	1036	December 7	38
2022	Chiba Lotte Marines	Haruya Tanaka	3	1037	December 7	45
2022	Chiba Lotte Marines	Shuta Takano	4	1038	December 7	38
2022	Chiba Lotte Marines	Yuta Kaneda	5	1039	December 7	54

A couple comments:

It's kind of crazy how low the print runs are for a lot of these cards. Akira Neo's card had a print run of 877 and nothing's come close to that since. There's only two other cards with print runs of more than 200 (Yasuobu Okugawa with 284 and Shogo Asano with 265). The guy who's probably the best player on this list - Hiroto Takahashi - only had a print run of 91 cards.
Epoch included a card of the Dragons' ikusei pick from 2019 - Hiroaki Matsuda. I'm not positive but I think this is the only Epoch One card for a development player ever.
There are 58 total Epoch One draft pick cards. More than half of them (33) are from 2022.

I have all of these but in the interests of brevity, I'm only going to show one for each team in each year: