Summer Offerings

As usual, I feel like I blinked and a month passed since the last time I did a round up of the recently announced sets.  So let's get to the new batch of announcements...

- I'm somewhat astonished but Topps is actually releasing a second 2026 NPB set while the baseball season is still happening.  Hell, the release date for this year's edition of the Stadium Club NPB set is July 10th, so it'll hit the stores before the All Star break.  Considering that the 2024 edition didn't come out until December of that year and last year's wasn't until September, this is a major development for them.  Like their flagship set, the details for the set are a little sparse but again, I'm assuming it's a 216 card set.  There are at least "Beam Team" insert cards and I assume there are a couple other insert sets but, again, they're not listed.  There will be relic cards for active NPB players and autographed cards for both active and retired NPB players as well as active Japanese MLB players.  The big new gimmick that Topps has added for this set is image variations for 24 players (which I assume means two per team).  I mock Topps' NPB sets quite a bit but I have to admit that Stadium Club NPB is pretty good (at least the 2024 edition was).

- BBM's annual cheerleader/dance squad set - "Dancing Heroine" - will be released in mid August.  The set will be around 180 cards.  As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Giants, Tigers, Swallows, Dragons, Hawks, Fighters, Marines, Eagles and Lions and, as usual, I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set.  There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available.  

- Genesis, BBM's annual high-end set will be released in late September.  As has been standard for the entire run of the set (since 2012), the base set will contain 120 cards - ten per team which splits up as nine player cards and a team checklist.  No one really cares about the base set though as the attraction of Genesis is the autograph and memorabilia cards available in the boxes.  The different varieties are too numerous to list but there are booklets, super patches, ball autographs and multiplayer autographed memorabilia cards.  There's also a myriad of parallel versions of all the base cards and six "High-grade insert card" sets - Elite Of Nine, Game Changer, Unrivaled, Cross Forest, Combo Cross Foil Signing and Treasure.  

- The latest "Premier Edition" team set from Epoch is for the Dragons and will be released on July 11th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 42 for active players, one for Doala, the mascot and two for coaches Takuya Asao and Nobumasa Fukuda (using photos from when they were players) - and there is, of course, a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are seven different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (43), "Star" (3), "Rookie" (9), "Legendary" (2) and three types of multiple player autographed cards -  "Combo" (1), "Dragons Combo" (4) and "Rookie Combo" (5).  I don't know what the difference between "Combo" and "Dragons Combo" is.  

- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on July 25th.  This year's edition will have 38 cards - a 35 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card.  The base set is made up of all of last fall's draftees from the six Pacific League teams (regular phase of the draft only - there are no development players included).  There are three types of autographed cards available of all 35 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.

- I missed that SCC had issued their 2026 KBO Collection set on the 20th of last month, just three weeks before their Festa set that I erroneously said was the first KBO set for 2026.  The base set (or at least the "normal" portion of it) will contain 290 cards which will include 10 cards for retired players.  The other 280 cards feature two cards for 14 players on each of the ten KBO teams - one showing the player in their home uniform and one showing them in their away uniform.  There are 112 "Alphabet" cards which each feature a player superimposed on a letter that spells the team's name.  There's two versions for each letter for each team, one showing a pitcher and one showing a batter.  So for the LG Twins, there's two cards with a player superimposed over a letter "T", two cards with a letter "W", etc.  Obviously each team has a different number of these cards although each team has at least 10 (I'm guessing they did the full name of the "KT Wiz") and the SSG Landers having 14.  There are 80 "Hologam" cards - 7 for each team plus the 10 retired players - and each "Hologram" has a parallel version available.  There are 30 "Victory Charm" cards - three from each team.  These appear to be some sort of partially transparent card.  I think there's 77 autographed cards available - 67 for active players (with either six or seven per team) and one for each of the OB players.