It's only been two weeks since the last time I did a round up of new set announcements but I figured that it'd be a good time to do another one. Maybe writing this post will make me feel better about South Korea getting eliminated by the Dominican Republic...
- Calbee's Series One set will officially be released on April 27th but it'll likely start appearing in card shops both in person and on line a few days before that. The checklist for the set is online already and it unfortunately confirms that Calbee's continuing to produce sets that are smaller than they were just a few years ago. There are 89 cards in the base set, split between 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 23 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards. The theme of the checklist cards is mascots which is distressing for two reasons - in previous years the checklist cards featured some of the best photography in Calbee's sets and Calbee did mascots as the theme of their checklist cards last year too. The fact that there's six checklist cards implies that there will again be only two Calbee "flagship" sets this year with Series Two coming out sometime in the summer - Calbee's intent every year is to include twelve checklist cards across all of their Series - one checklist card featuring each NPB team (although not a list of the cards for that particular team). There are the usual 24 "Star" insert cards as well as four "Legend" cards featuring players who retired last year - Yuito Mori, Sho Nakata, Hisayoshi Chono and Shingo Kawabata. There are gold facsimile signature parallels of both the "Star" and "Legend" cards. There are also 12 "Team Home Run King" cards listed but I'm not sure if these will be available in packs or as some sort of "special box". Calbee used to have 12 card box sets that were associated with each Series and sold through some on line retailer (most recently Amazon.co.jp) but the equivalent cards from last year's sets were available in packs.
- BBM has announced two more of their "comprehensive" team sets. As usual, each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set. Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense). The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar. There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.
| Release Date | Team | Regular Cards | Subsets | Non-Premium Inserts | Treasure | Esperanza | Admirar | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Late May | Carp | 63 | 2025 Topics(4), Promising New Forces(4), Born In Setouchi(5) | Paramount(9), Tough Enough(3), Carp Nova(3), Promising Future(3) | 20 | 9 | 6 | Autograph cards |
| Late May | Giants | 63 | Mascot Gathering(1), Promising Young Players(5), Strongest Unit(2), Three Arrows(3), Grand Slam Trio(3), Reliable Veterans(4) | Giants Pride 2026(15), Rookies(3) | 24 | 9 | 6 | Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex 2026 (3), My Fave (12), Super Metallic Giants (9) plus memorabilia cards |
Remember that the Giants don't allow their players to have authentic autographed cards.
4 comments:
The Calbee sets are getting more and more depressing by the year. Another 60 card base set with some very bland photography and boring sub-sets, issued in only two series. AND the damn thing is coming out at the end of April rather than around opening day like they used to.
Incidentally grocery stores right now are stocking bags of those Calbee Pro Yakyuu spirits and I wonder if the existence of those might partly explain why Calbee's regular set has become so bad. Particularly they might explain why they no longer do three series, devoting their production line to the yakyuu spirits stuff instead.
If so, I hate that. As baseball cards those Pro yakyu spirits ones are just awful and except for one bag I bought just to see what they were like I never buy them.
Yeah, that could be what's happening. I assume the Pro Yakyu Spirits cards are popular but I think they're hideous and I wouldn't bother getting them if I was still getting new stuff. And it's really disappointing that the last set broke the streak of a certain Baystars foreign player never being included in any sets by the major card makers.
There was a SABR event with the guy who runs Mint a little over a month ago and I almost asked him why Calbee had stopped trying to make a decent product. Would have been interesting to hear his take although I'm guessing he'd have tried to spin it positively.
Yeah, I think they are hideous too. Also they sell for the same price as regular Calbee bags, but have only one card rather than two per pack. Not interested, though it is funny that they broke the "Baystar who shall not be named" streak.
On a related tangent, it was reported in the news this morning that a major snack maker here (not Calbee) has halted production of potato chips due to the war in Iran/shutting of the Strait of Hormuz.
I wonder if Calbee will be making a similar announcement, and also what effect that would have on its card set for this year (given how poor potato crops in the past have sometimes been cited as the reason for reduced cards production in gven years). The problem this time isn't potato supply, but rather the skyrocketing cost of the cooking oil they use to fry them, which I guess comes from the Middle East.
Interesting times.
Oh, wow, I hadn't even thought about that possibility. And the crop failures would usually effect the following year's cards - i.e. the 2017 Calbee set only had two series because of crop failures in 2016 - but this sounds like it's having a much more immediate effect.
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