Saturday, June 21, 2025

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!

6 comments:

Zippy Zappy said...

The way I can open a pack and send out the contents halfway across the world in the same day is the best feeling in the world.

NPB Card Guy said...

Glad to play my small part in your happiness

Fuji said...

Kudos to Calbee. I love the use of mascots on team checklists.

NPB Card Guy said...

Both BBM and Calbee have used mascots on their team checklists before but I think this is the first time someone's used a cartoon version. Again, it's not really a problem per se but since Calbee's photo diversity has been somewhat lacking in recent years, the cartoons come at the expense of what had frequently been the best photos in the set.

Sean said...

Nice!

One thing I noticed is that the Strike Out subset in this year's Calbee seems to be the de facto new "Star Card" set, while the "Star Card" subset has been demoted to just another subset like the Titleholder, etc.

What I mean is that the Strikeout set is the only one which has some shiny embossed lettering on the front of the cards. Usually the Star Card set has some sort of gimimck like that on the front, but this year the Star Cards don't have any shiny/glittery stuff on them and are produced the same way the regular cards are. This is the first time I've ever seen the Star Card set being the same as the regular cards.

Also: I'm not surprised to see what the backs of this years Topps set look like, but as always I'm still disappointed.

NPB Card Guy said...

I think the Star cards are still not considered part of the base set but I get what you're saying about them not getting the "special treatment".

Same on the Topps backs