2022 Epoch One Dragons Signature Set

Every November since 2020, Epoch has been selling "Epoch One Signature" sets for several teams.  These are sets containing anywhere from 14 to 19 cards, two of which are autographed.  The cards use the same design as that year's Epoch One cards but all the base cards feature a facsimile autograph.  Some, but not necessarily all, of the cards are essentially facsimile autograph parallels of Epoch One cards.  The sets are very limited - I didn't check all the print runs but the ones I checked were between 30 and 55 - and all the base cards are serially numbered.  These sets are not cheap - I think Epoch has consistently priced them at 30,000 yen or roughly $200.  Unlike the standard Epoch One cards, Epoch decides up front how many sets they're making, so once they're all sold, that's it.

They started out doing just four teams in 2020 but expanded to nine teams in 2021 and they've done ten teams each of the last three years - everyone but the Buffaloes and the Giants.  Since they don't do Epoch One cards for Orix, it's not a big surprise they're not doing a "Signature" set for the Buffaloes (although that doesn't stop them from doing a Carp set) but it took me a second to realize why they don't do one for the Giants - Yomiuri does not allow the card companies to sell autographed cards of their active players.

I was looking for something else on Yahoo! Japan Auctions a while back and came across the base set for the 2022 Epoch One Signature set for the Dragons for around 3000 yen ($20-ish).  The base set had 17 cards in it and obviously did not include the two autographed cards.  I was curious about it so I asked Ryan to grab the set for me.  He did and it was in the box I got from him last week.

As it turns out, I have the original Epoch One card that corresponds to the first card in the set so I decided to show both cards to illustrate the differences.  The cards are for Akira Neo making his first appearance as a pitcher after converting from being a position player:

2022 Epoch One Dragons Signature Set #PSD-01

2022 Epoch One #299

Here are the backs of the cards - you can see that the Signature Set card is /46.  Obviously all the Signature cards in the set are /46 but the weird thing is that they're not all the same number.  This one is "41/46" but there are 14 other numbers among the other 16 cards with only one number - "28/46" - appearing more than once.

Just eyeballing it, it looks like the text on the back of the cards is the same.

Here's the rest of the cards in the set:

#PSD-02 Shinnosuke Ogasawara

#PSD-03 Yuya Yanagi

#PSD-04 Yudai Ohno

#PSD-05 Daisuke Sobue

#PSD-06 Hiroto Fuku

#PSD-07 Yota Kyoda

#PSD-08 Shuhei Takahashi

#PSD-09 Dayan Viciedo

#PSD-10 Yohei Ohshima

#PSD-11 Kosuke Fukudome

#PSD-12 Kenta Bright

#PSD-13 Kosuke Ukai

#PSD-14 Taisei Ishimori

#PSD-15 Taisei Miya

#PSD-16 Mao Hoshino

#PSD-17 Yuma Fukumoto

The card of Fukumoto is for his retirement game.

The last six cards are for the Dragons' 2021 draft class/2022 rookie class.  It's kind of funny - 2021 was the only year between 2018 and 2022 that Epoch didn't have Epoch One cards for that year's Dragons' draft picks so by getting these, I've kind of filled in that gap (although they're in wrong card design - they should be in 2021's format instead of 2022's).  I believe that Ukai and Fukumoto were the only two of the Dragons' 2022 rookies to play at ichi-gun that season.

I checked all the cards against the 2022 Epoch One cards for the Dragons and what I found was that there was a corresponding Epoch One card for eleven of the cards in the set - Neo, Ogasawara, Yanagi, Ohno, Sobue, Kyoda, Takahashi, Viciedo, Ohshima, Fukudome and Ukai.  The cards for Fuku and all the rookies except Ukai are unique to the Signature set.

While it was interesting to pick up one of these to see what it was like, I don't think I need to get any more of them.  And that'd be the case even if I was still getting new sets.