It's been a bit since my last round up of the upcoming card releases so I thought I should get caught up. I suspect that these are the last of the 2025 releases but it wouldn't be the first time I thought the card manufacturers were finished for a year and then found out I was wrong. All but one of these releases are on the high end of the price scale.
- We'll start with the release that's not super expensive. BBM is releasing a box set for the Fighters called "Great Voyage" in mid-December. Each box contains the entire 36 card base set plus one "special insert card". The base set contains 24 cards of "young" Fighters players including Hiromi Itoh, Kotaro Kiyomiya, Koki Kitayama and Yuya Gunji plus all six of the 2024 draftees/2025 rookie class. The base set also contains 12 "combination" cards and I'm guessing that all 24 of the players appear on one of those cards but I don't know that for sure. The "special insert card" could possibly be a foil signed card or (I think) a memorabilia card. Again, I'm not sure but I think the memorabilia cards are only for the 2024 draftees - one of them is combination card featuring all six players. I don't think there are any actual autograph cards available. Unopened boxes will retail for 5500 yen or roughly $36.
- Moving on to the more expensive stuff, BBM will release their "ultra high-end" "Glory" set on November 28th. Boxes will contain just six cards and retail for 26,400 yen or about $172. There are 36 cards (three active players from each NPB team) in the base set, each of which has a parallel. I think the base cards are /2000 but I don't know what the parallels are. There are two possible inserts - "MIYABI" (six cards, each /50 with an even more limited parallel) and "Glorius 3D" (12 cards, each /25). The big attraction is, of course, the memorabilia and autographed cards. The memorabilia cards include "super patch" cards as well as combo and triple ones.
- BBM's "ultra high-end" multi-sport set "Crown" will be released at the end of December. Like "Glory", this set will be sold in six card boxes that will retail for 26,400 yen. All the cards in the set are serially numbered but I don't know what any of them are numbered to. The base set has 48 cards, 18 of which will feature baseball players - 9 OB and 9 active. There are four insert sets although two of them - "Velvet" and "Jet" - could be considered parallels of the base cards as there are 48 cards in each of those sets. The "Velvet" cards are "made of brushed material" while the "Jet" cards are "made from jet black special paper". The other two insert sets are "Foil Autumn" (24 cards on "hologram paper") and "Sparkling" (12 3D cards). And, of course, there are tons of autographed cards although no memorabilia cards. Each box is guaranteed to include at least one autographed card.
- Epoch has announced two more of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets. The "Hawks Stars & Legends" set will be released on November 29th and the "Tigers Stars & Legends" set will be out on December 6th. Both sets will be sold in boxes of four cards (well, two "mini-boxes" of two cards) for 18,700 yen or about $122. The Hawks base set will contain 64 cards (41 active players and 23 OB players) while the Tigers set base set will contain 45 cards (25 active player and 20 OB players). I think all the base cards are serially numbered but, again, I don't know what the counts are. Both sets have what seems to be the standard "Stars & Legend" set inserts - three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with six "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5. The Hawks set will have four different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (64 cards), "Star" (two cards), "Rookie" (six cards) and "Legendary" (20 cards). The Tigers set also has four different types of autographed cards but they're slightly different - "Authentic" (45 cards), "Star" (21 cards), "Legendary" (18 cards) and "Baseball" (six cards). The "Baseball" ones are on pieces of actual baseballs.
- Topps has announced that their fourth NPB set for 2025 will be "Finest". Boxes containing 15 packs of four cards will retail for 9900 yen (~$65) and will be released on November 14th. The base set contains 216 cards (as usual) which breaks down to 18 cards per team (as usual). Those 18 cards will contain cards for the team's manager and top three 2024 draft picks (also as usual). There are four 24 card insert sets - "The Man", "Finest Fortune", "Creators" and "1993 Baseball's Finest". According to the checklist for the set, there are a ton of autographed cards available. Looks like ten players for each team along with a bunch of NPB Legends. The Legends include a number of current MLB players like Shohei Ohtani, Masataka Yoshida, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Yu Darvish and Shota Imanga along with Ichiro, Norichika Aoki, Sadaharu Oh, Hideo Nomo and Cecil Fielder. The only memorabilia cards available are all for Ichiro - a "relic", a "Topps Sterling Jumbo Letter Patch Card" and a "Topps Dynasty Autograph Patch Card".
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