2025 In Review - Calbee

Calbee's 2025 output was unfortunately much the same as their 2023 and 2024 output.  Once again, Calbee issued their "flagship" set in only two Series rather than the three that they had done for much of the previous twenty years.  

Series One came out in May - two months later than Calbee has published it in previous years.  My guess is that they decided if they were only publishing two Series instead of three, they could schedule them evenly throughout the baseball season rather than starting just before the season started.  The base set contained a total of 87 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 21 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  There were three associated insert sets.  Two of these were ones that had been included in previous years - "Star" and "Legend" (for players who retired at the end of the previous season) but the third was a 12 card set called "Strikeout Leader".  In the past, Calbee had special 12 card box sets that were only available from their Japanese Amazon store but it appears that they have shifted these to being available in packs now.

Series Two was released in August and contained a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards, 12 "Opening Game Cleanup Hitter" cards and six checklist cards.  There were two insert sets - "Star" and "Opening Day Pitcher" with the latter again being cards that would have previously only been available in the Amazon.co.jp Calbee shop box sets.

Calbee bookended these releases with a pair of sets that were a tie-in with the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" mobile game.  The first of these sets was released in January and I'm pretty sure Calbee had originally intended to issue the set in 2024 as the set had 47 cards - one less than would be expected.  The missing player appears to have been Roki Sasaki who they would have been able to include in a 2024 set but not a set released in 2025.  The second set, containing only 24 cards, was released in December.  It's a little confusing, as both sets have the same name - "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" - and look very similar.