Three Envelopes From Kenny

I got an email a few weeks back from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) informing me that there were three(!) envelopes containing cards that were working their way across the Pacific to me from Japan.  Two of these envelopes showed up on the first of the month but, for whatever reason, the third didn't make it to my house until today.  

The first of these envelopes contained an unopened pack of Bandai's collectible card game called Fan Stars.  Specifically it was a pack of the Central League Vol. 2 cards that came out at the end of May:

Like the Pacific League Vol. 1 pack that Kenny sent me a few months back, this pack contained seven cards - five "normal", one "rare" and one "super rare":

#BBC02-062

#BBC02-007

#BBC02-077

#BBC02-092

#BBC02-029

#BBC02-021

#BBC02-044

It might not be obvious but the Nakano card is the "rare" one and the Tsutsugoh card is the "super rare" one.

The other two envelopes contained a mixture of this year's Calbee, Epoch and Topps cards.  Here's the Calbee's:

#027 Kazuya Ojima

#030 Ryusei Terachi

#029 Daito Yamamoto

#035 Masaki Oyokawa

#018 Shoma Fujihira

Here are the Epoch cards from their "NPB" flagship set:

#102

#007

#134

#208

#023

#046

#085

#075

#234P

#168

It's hard to tells from the scan but the Kaito Saiki card is a parallel card.  The Matsushita card is a "rookie variation" card that came from the retail edition of the set - the "regular" version of the card has a different photo.

Finally the last batch of cards were from this year's Stadium Club NPB set which continues to be the best looking set that Topps has produced for their NPB offerings:

#27

#91

#5

#157

#120

#207

#139

#52

#64

I swear, if Topps increased the size of their Stadium Club NPB set to something approaching the size of BBM's 1st Version set, they'd give BBM a run for their money on being the NPB card set to get if you were getting just one set.

Once again, thank you for the cards, Kenny!

More New Items

I know it's only been a little over two weeks since the last time I did a round up of the latest set announcements but a there's been a couple more since then, one of which has kind of a short fuse, so I thought I should do another quick one.

- The short fuse item is that Calbee has finally announced that this year's Series Two will be released in late August.  Unfortunately, the set is pretty much the same size as every Calbee set from the past few years.  There's a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards (5 per team), 12 "Hope" cards (featuring a young prospect from each of the 12 teams) and 6 checklist cards (featuring photos of team mascots).  There are three insert sets - the usual 24 card "Star" set, a single "Legend" for Hirokazu Sawamura's retirement at the end of last season (there were four similar "Legend" cards in Series One) and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" set.  There are parallel versions of all the inserts.  Calbee has put the checklist of the set on line here.

- I keep forgetting that Bushiroad is still putting out their DreamOrder collectible card games this year.  The next release is called "Play Re:Style" and is due out on September 19th.  I'm not sure but I think there's 180 base cards (84 common, 48 rare, 36 "super rare" and 12 "zone rare") plus 30 Tactics cards (1 rare and 29 common) and the usual plethora of parallels.  I'm somewhat curious how much longer Bushiroad is going to keep publishing these as I kind of feel like they've been eclipsed by the Bandai FanStars cards.

- BBM will be releasing their annual "Rookie Edition Premium" set in late October.  Each box set will contain 38 cards - the complete 36 card base set plus two "premium insert cards".  The "premium insert cards" are all either autographed or memorabilia cards.  Since each box will most likely contain at least one autograph card, they aren't cheap.  The MSRP for a single box is 18,700 yen which is around $118.  The base set features three 2025 draft picks/2026 rookies from each team.  They won't necessarily be the top three draft picks but rather the three "best" (according to BBM) rookies for each team.

- Epoch has announced another of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" monicker.  This one is for the Hawks and will be released on October 10th.  The set will be sold in four card boxes that will retail for 18,700 yen (~$118).  The base set isn't quite set yet but will contain at least 75 cards including 37 cards for active players.  There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  There are six different types of autograph cards available - "Authentic" (75+ cards), "Star" (8 cards), "Rookie" (4 cards), "Breakthrough" (8 types), "Remember 1999" (15+ cards) and "Remember 2011" (13+ cards).

Summer To Fall Releases

I wanted to do a quick post on recent set announcements.  There haven't been a lot and I'm a little worried that I haven't heard about when Calbee's Series Two will be released.  Last year it came out in August but I've yet to see anything about it this year.

- I should mention that the Topps Finest set that was released in the US earlier this month included a 35 card "World's Finest" insert set that features players from this year's World Baseball Classic.  The set includes four players from Samurai Japan - Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami and Seiya Suzuki - along with one player from Korea - Lee Jung-hoo.  It's a bit disappointing that there aren't any players from either team who aren't on MLB rosters.  I took a quick look on Ebay to look at what the cards are selling for and the base versions aren't outrageously expensive.  The parallels are another matter, of course.

- Epoch has announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets.  The Lions set will be released on August 8th while the Tigers set will be out on the 22nd of that month.  The base set for the Lions will have 40 cards (39 for active players and one for an OB player - Orestes Destrade) while that of the Tigers will have 45 cards (40 for active players and five for OB players).  All the base cards in both sets will have a "hologram" parallel available.  Both sets have 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).  The Lions set has an additional three card insert set dedicated to Takumi Kuriyama.  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.  The Lions set has seven different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (39 cards), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (6), "Legendary" (1 - I assume it's Destrade), "Takumi Kuriyama" (3 - I think these are autographed version of the insert cards), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Combo" (3).  The Tigers set only has five different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (38), "Star" (7), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (5) and "Combo" (3).  I have no idea who the two active players that are in the base set but didn't sign "Authentic" autographs.  This brings the count of teams that Epoch has done "Premier Edition" sets for to eight.  The only teams they're missing are the Marines, Hawks, Eagles and Giants.

- Speaking of the Giants, Epoch has announced the first of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets for this year and it's for them.  The set has the somewhat unwieldy name of Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia and three card boxes of it will retail for 16,500 yen (roughly $100).  The base set will contain at least 55 cards - 22 active players and at least 33 OB players.  There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  There's also a six card "Unbreakable Spirit" insert set.  The memorabilia cards referred to by the set title are bat cards for eight active players and batting glove cards (and a batting glove and bat combo card) for one player (Yuta Izuguchi).  The set also includes several different types of autographed cards.  All the autographed cards are for OB players because the Giants do not allow authentic autographed cards for any of their active players.  The set will be in stores on October 3rd.

- BBM issues a multi-sport set each fall since 2016.  This set is usually called "Infinity" except in years that end in either "6" or "1".  Since this year is 2026, the set is not "Infinity" but "Masterpiece" instead.  The funky naming pattern is because BBM celebrates the founding of their parent company - BBM Magazine Sha - in 1946 so this year is their 80th Anniversity (with 2021 having been their 75th and 2016 being their 70th).  To be fair, I've never really noticed much of a difference between the sets called "Infinity" and the ones called "Masterpiece".  BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set but, as usual, it looks like most of them are for baseball players.  The list only includes OB players - and OB players who are actually retired as opposed to active in MLB OB players.  Some of the players are Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto and one foreign player - Warren Cromartie.  Other sports represented in the set include softball, soccer, rugby, basketball, volleyball, tennis, table tennis, badminton, pickleball, bowling, gymnastics, diving, sumo, judo and pro wrestling.  The set will be released in late October.

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.

Topps, Team Sets, Game Cards, 2nd Version and a KBO set

Time for another round up of recently announced NPB sets...

- Topps is back for their sixth year of doing NPB sets.  I'm not exactly sure of the details of this year's edition of their flagship set though - TradingCardJournal.com says the set will be released on June 12 but Topps' Japanese website says it'll be May 29th.  Neither listing says how big the set will be but I'm assuming it'll be the usual 216 cards (18 cards per team).  There will be insert cards but it beats the hell out of me what they'll be because Topps didn't bother including that information either - other than they're going to have one that uses the 1991 design.  There'll be the usual myriad of parallels but again there are no details other than they'll exist and some of them will be serially numbered.  There will be autographed cards of active NPB players, "active players currently playing in MLB" which I assume means active former NPB players (I don't expect to see Aaron Judge cards) and retired players (which have been some of Topps' more interesting inclusions).  The big news is that Topps will include relic cards for active players with this set for the first time.

- While I'm on the subject of Topps, I should mention that there are some World Baseball Classic inserts available in the recently released Bowman set but they're pretty rare and expensive.  The 25 card "Anime" insert set features anime-style cartoon images of a number of active and retired players including Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Paul Skenes and Bobby Witt, Jr. in their WBC uniforms.  One of the retired players in the set is Sadaharu Oh which is pretty cool and the active MLB players include Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto and Tatsuya Imai.  There's a kanji variation of the "Anime" inserts as well that's only for the Japanese players (Ohtani, Oh, Murakami, Okamoto, Imai along with Hideo Nomo and Shotaro Morii, a farmhand in the Sacramento Athletics organization).  

- BBM has announced the final three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026.  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 translate 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.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  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	Inserts	Other
Early July	Buffaloes	69	Reborn(2), Samurai Soul(2), Heirloom Sword(2), Small But Amazing(2), Natural(4)	Go All Together(9), Beyond The Dream That Must Come True(3), Golden Egg(3), Three Pillars(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph cards
Mid July	Marines	68	Rising Young Players(4), Veteran Players(2), Specialists(3), Early Season Highlights(4)	Key Players(9), Promising Players(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late July	Dragons	69	Young Starting Pitchers(3), Infield Key Players(3), Tokai Heroes(6)	Unstoppable(9), No Limit(3), Rise Above(3), Shine Bright(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

- BBM has also announced that this year's edition of 2nd Version, the second part of their flagship set, will be released in late August.   The base set follows the pattern of almost all 2nd Version sets since 2015 - 216 player cards (18 for each team), 12 team checklists, 36 "1st Version Update" cards (three for each team), 36 "Cross Forest" cards (three for each team, numbered in continuation of the same subset in 1st Version) and a currently unspecified number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are likely short-printed again, so the base set without them will be 300 cards.  There's six different insert sets - "The Beginning", "My Generation (Year Of The Rat)", "Hero's Theme", "Combined", "Treasure" and "Foil Picturesque".  All of these have 12 cards except for "Treasure" which has 36.  There's the usual plethora of parallels of the player cards along with the "Secret", "Ultra Secret", and "Super Ultra Secret" photo variations.  There will also be memorabilia cards and autographed cards - including autographed cards using the designs from BBM's team sets along with "buyback" autographs.

- Epoch has announced another "Premier Edition" team set.  This one is for the Fighters and will hit the stores on July 18th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 37 for active players and eight for OB players.  There's 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 five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" 37), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (8) and "Combo"6).  

- Bandai is issuing updates to their "Professional Baseball FanStars" collectible card game.  The Vol. 2 Booster Packs for both the Central League and Pacific League will be released on May 30th.  Both sets will have 96 cards - 36 "Normal", 30 "Rare", 18 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare".  In addition, Bandai will issue a set called "EX Booster Pack Vol.1" on August 1 but there's not really any more information about it than that.  

- And finally, the first KBO set for 2026 has been announced by SCC.  It's called "Festa Set" and will be released on June 6th.  As is kind of standard for KBO sets, it's a bit confusing but I think the base set is 80 cards (eight per team) with all the base cards being labeled "Sporty".  There are also 80 "Treasure" cards but I'm not sure if these should be considered inserts or parallels or just 80 more base set cards.  There are 49 autographed cards available which works out to five per team except for SSG which one has four.

Team Sets Galore!

I feel like I blink and a month has passed since the last time I did a round up of new set announcements.  There's been a bunch of new announcements since then, most of which are team sets.  One of them is already in stores but most of the rest won't be out until June.

- The set that's already in stores is a 30 card Tigers team set from Bandai.  This set is being sold in packs of two cards that include two vanilla cream wafers so Jambalaya has referred to this as the "Twin Wafers" set.  It looks like there's a 20 card base set featuring various Tigers players along with card for the team's mascots along with a 10 card subset with card numbers that start with "R" (for rare maybe?).  The "R" cards feature additional card of nine players who are in the base set (Teruaki Sato, Koji Chikamoto, Shota Morishita, etc) plus a card of manager Kyuji Fujikawa.  The cards are only available in Kansai.  (I should mention that the first series of Bandai's other NPB cards for 2026 - the collectible card game Fan Stars - came out a few weeks ago and are pretty attractive for CCG cards).

- Speaking of Collectible Card Games (ok, maybe not the smoothest transition), Bushiroad is apparently still pumping out their DreamOrder cards.  There'll be a booster pack set called "Zone Impact" (or possibly "Impact Zone") released on June 6th.  I think there are 180 "regular" player cards - 84 "common", 48 "rare", 36 "super rate" and 12 "zone rare" along with 30 "Tactics" cards - 29 "common" and 1 "rare".  There's also the usual bewildering batch of parallels.

- Epoch has announced that the 2026 edition of their flagship "NPB" set will be out on June 27th.  After the size of the base set shrunk in each of the last two years, it was nice to see that it'll be 240 cards again this year (still way too big of a drop from the 432 cards the set was from 2018 to 2023) which works out to 20 cards per team.  There is a "retail version" of the set as well has an additional 12 "rookie variation" cards listed under the "regular card" section of the add.  There's some other differences between the "standard" and "retail" versions.  While both sets have parallel versions of all 240 base cards, the "standard" version also has two 12 card insert sets - "NPB Stars" and "Walk-Off Win" while the "retail" version only has parallel versions of the 12 "rookie variation" cards.  Both sets have 178 different autographed cards available but the "standard" version also offers 12 of Epoch's ubiquitous "GEM" premium insert cards.  I do not know if the "retail version" is exclusive to FamilyMart as it was two years ago.

- Epoch has announced two more of their 2026 "Premier Edition" team sets.  The Baystars set will be out on June 6th and the Buffaloes will be out a week later on the 13th.  As usual, the sets are very similar except for the size of the base set.  The Baystars set has 49 cards in its base set (including 10 cards for OB players) while the Buffaloes set has just 41 base set cards (although only two of them are OB players so both sets feature 39 active players).  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  Both sets have 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.  Both sets have five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (40 for DeNA, 39 for Orix), "Star" (5 and 6 respectively), "Rookie" (6 for the Baystars and 10 for the Buffaloes), "Legendary" (10 for DeNA and 2 for Orix) and "Combo"(8 and 4).  

- Lastly, BBM has announced four more of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026, bringing the total number announced for this year to nine.  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.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  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	Inserts	Other
Late May	Hawks	65	Inheritance(6), Fight! Kyushu(3), Next Cannon(2), Speed Baller(5)	Easygoing and Self-Reliant(9), Craftsman(3), Young Gun(3), Next Wave(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(18)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Mid June	Baystars	68	Veteran Sluggers(3), Leading Candidates(3), Master-Disciple Duo(3), Early Highlights(3)	Main Players(9), No. 1 Draft Picks(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(18)	Autograph cards
Mid June	Fighters	69	Re: Evolution(2), Middle Infield(1), Slugging Catcher(3), Hokkaido Association(5), No-hitter(1)	Dominate(9), Three Arrows(3), Next Up(3), Momentum(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late June	Tigers	68	Promising Young Players(3), Memories Of Jersey Numbers(3), Solid Contribution(3), World Tigers(3)	Glory To Tigers!(9), Mighty Relievers(3), Contenders(3), Gush Out(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

I don't know why the Baystars cards don't add up to 81.

The last three teams that BBM hasn't announced yet are the Marines, Dragons and Buffaloes.

Calbee And More Team Sets

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.

- Epoch announced the second of their 2026 "Premier Edition" team sets - this one is for the Swallows.  The base set will 40 cards - 38 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Ikeyama) plus OB cards for Norichika Aoki and Shingo Kawabata.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that 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.  Finally, there are five different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (37 different), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (7), "Legendary" (2) and some undetermined as yet number of "Combo" autographs.  The set will hit the shelves on April 25th.

2026 Epoch One Samurai Japan Cards

I had an email exchange with Ryan today and he alerted me to the fact that Epoch had issued some Epoch One cards for Samurai Japan.  There are 21 cards in all and they cover some of the exhibition games that the team played in February.  

As you'd probably expect, there are no MLB members of the team included but there are cards for Kensuke Kondoh, Teruaki Sato (2 cards), Shota Morishita (2 cards), Seishiro Sakamoto (2 cards), Kenya Wakatsuki, Hiromi Itoh, Hiroya Miyagi (2 cards), Chihiro Sumida, Hiroto Takahashi, Shugo Maki, Kaito Kozono, Koki Kitayama, and Shoma Fujihira with Sato, Morishita, Sakamoto and Miyagi having two cards each.  There are also cards for players who played in the exhibition games but are not part of the WBC roster - Hibiki Shinohara, Tai Sasaski and Daito Yamamoto (who also had two cards).

The cards are 500 yen each and will be available for three days - which will be roughly 6 PM JST on Monday, March 9th (5 AM EDT).  As always it does not appear that Epoch will ship these cards overseas.

Almost Spring

After several weeks of frigid temperatures and yet another snowfall last weekend, we're finally seeing signs of spring here in the mid-Atlantic part of the US.  It's a beautiful day in the mid-50's and almost all of the snow has melted, making me feel like that spring might finally be on the way.  With that in mind, I figured it'd be a good time to go over the sets that have been announced over the last month or so.

- BBM issues box set in March of each year with a different theme under the "Icons" label.  This year's edition is called "Icons - Nomination" and, as has been the standard for a while, will contain 37 cards - the 36 card base set plus one "special" card.  I think the theme is "top draft picks" so the card base set will feature three players for each team who were (or are - the first round picks from the 2025 draft for eight teams are in the set) top draft picks.  The "special" card could be one of a number of possibilities - a "foil printed" card, an "Extreme2026" insert card (one of the eight 2026 rookies), an "Advance" insert card, a "foil signed" card or an actual autographed card.  There are parallel versions of the "foil printed", "Extreme2026" and "Advance" cards available.  The set will be released on March 30th.

- BBM has announced the first three of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  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
Early April	Eagles	71	Newcomer(2), Title Holders(3), Tohoku Spirits(5)	Main Players(9), Growing Up(3), Veterans Of The Counterattack(3), Rookie Phenom(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Mid April	Lions	68	I Am!(4), Advantage Ahead(3), Headliner(3), Legacy of the 1(3)	Shishi Zangetsu(9), Tachyon(3), For A Long Time(3), Anthem(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Late April	Swallows	67	Conversion(2), Fourth Round Picks(3), Iron Wall Relief(4), Promising Young Fielders(5)	Main Players(9), Combination(3), Breakout Candidates(3), Rookies(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards

- Speaking of team sets, Epoch has announced the first of their "Premier Edition" team sets for 2026.  Epoch's team sets are not "comprehensive" (i.e. they don't have every player on the 70 man roster) but this first set for the Carp will have a base set of 49 cards - 47 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Arai) plus OB cards for Seiya Suzuki and Koji Yamamoto.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that 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.  Finally, there are seven different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (45 different), "Star" (5), "Carp Combo" (2), "Combo" (1), "Rookie" (9), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Legendary" (1).  I have no idea what the difference between "Carp Combo" and "Combo" is.  The set will be released on May 2nd.

- Epoch has again teamed up with the OB Club to produce another OB Samurai Japan box set.  This year's edition is "officially" dubbed the "Japan Professional Baseball OB Club Official Card Japan National Baseball Team Holographica 2025" set and will be out on March 28th.  Some of the set details are still in flux but the base set will contain at least 32 cards for retired players (and managers) of Samurai Japan.  Each box will contain the full box set plus two "special" cards - a "hologram" parallel card (which may have parallel versions as well) and one of three different types of autographed cards - "Authentic", "Tribute To The Past" and "Baseball".  From the name of the set, I assume that it was originally intended to be released in 2025 but got delayed (as was also the case for the other two sets that Epoch collaborates with the OB Club on - Career Achievement and Holographica).  I'm kind of amused that last year's OB Samurai Japan set was under the "Career Achievement" label but this year's is under the "Holographica" one.  I gave into temptation with last year's set and was disappointed with it.  Given that this year's set appears to have many of the same players, I don't think it will be hard for me to give it a pass.

Zippy Zapped Yet Again!

I arrived home from work Tuesday evening to discover another trans-Pacific delivery from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy). The brown envelope contained a whopping 13 cards - two from Calbee and eleven from Epoch.

I'll start off with the Calbees.  These are two more of their "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" cards although it was not immediately obvious if they were from the set that was released at the beginning of last December (which Kenny had sent me a card from earlier this year) or the one that came out at the end of last month (both sets are called the same thing - "Pro Yakyu Spirits A").  I finally realized that the card numbers indicated that they were both from the set from last month (even though the "cover date" on the cards is 2025):

2025 Calbee Pro Yakyu Spirits A #PS-41 (Naofumi Kizawa)

2025 Calbee Pro Yakyu Spirits A #PS-44 (Hiromi Itoh)

I guess had expected that these cards would have "Series2" on them since the ones from December had "Series1" but they don't.  Well, actually now that I look at all the cards in the set over at Jambalaya, I see that the "Anniversary Player" cards from the set do have "Series2" on them (as opposed to these which are "Prospi Selection" cards).  So cards PS-01 to PS-24 which were in the set released in December are "Series1", as are cards PS-24 to PS-48 which were in the set released in January.  But cards PS-49 to PS-72 that are also in the set released in January are labeled "Series2".  Make perfect sense, right?

Kenny figured out the best way to keep them straight: "I thought these were all the same set but the only difference was whether they came 1 per bag or 2 per bag."  (The set from December was 

The Epoch cards were much less confusing.  They were all from last year's NPB set.  I was really happy to get these as Epoch was the only Japanese card manufacturer that I hadn't gotten any cards from last year:

2025 Epoch NPB #167

2025 Epoch NPB #107

2025 Epoch NPB #121

2025 Epoch NPB #038

2025 Epoch NPB #075

2025 Epoch NPB #144

2025 Epoch NPB #211

2025 Epoch NPB #229

2025 Epoch NPB #181

2025 Epoch NPB #096

2025 Epoch NPB #002

So once again, thanks for the cards, Kenny!