Kenny Strikes Again

I returned home from running some errands this morning to discover that Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) had made good on his recent threat promise to send me some more 2025 baseball cards.  I opened the envelope to discover a handful of cards from both the Calbee Series One set (not that there's another Calbee option since the summer solstice has now passed without the release of Series Two for a third straight year) and the new Topps NPB set which came out a few weeks back.

First, let's take a look at the Calbees.  In his last envelope to me, Kenny had sent me six "regular" player cards.  This envelope included four more cards but all of them were either subset or insert cards.  Here they all are:

#T-10

#SO-11

#S-19

#C-06

Sean had mentioned that the Title Holder cards looked a lot better this year and I agree.  I had not realized that the "Strikeout Leader" cards (of which the Miyagi card is one) were issued in the packs this year - I guess Calbee isn't doing the box sets through their Amazon.co.jp store anymore.  The cartoon images of the team mascots on the checklist cards are interesting but it's a shame they come at the expense of what are frequently the more interesting photos of the set.

Kenny had sent me an email a few weeks back, letting me know that he was including some Topps cards in the envelope.  I told him that I was wondering how I was going to get a chance to dump on Topps this year so I really appreciated him sending me the cards.  So without further ado, here's all but one of the Topps cards he sent me:

#63

#186

#84

#69

#198

The other card he sent me was a /150 blue border parallel:

#59

They're fine, I guess.  They use the same design as the 2025 Topps MLB cards although I see that they didn't bother to actually indicate the player's position in the baseball diamond widget in the lower right corner.  It's kind of a bland set of photos but that's not representative of the set - one of the few things I give Topps credit for with their NPB sets is that, for the most part, they feature pretty good photography (with the exception of the 206 sets, obviously).  You can check out the cards for yourself over at Jambalaya.  

My main gripe about the cards is the same as it was for the 2023 and 2024 editions - the photos are all from last year and no player who switched teams over the winter is included in the set.  The rookie photos (like Shoji above) are all posed shots that were probably taken last December.  I do not understand why Topps can't get their act together and put together an up-to-date set when BBM does one that's larger and out a month earlier.  

Oh, yeah, the backs continue to suck as well:

It might not sound like it, but I am, as always, grateful to Kenny for sending me these cards.  I must have been a very nice person in a previous life because I don't think I've done anything in THIS life to have earned being the beneficiary of his generosity.  Thanks again, Kenny!