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!

2026 Epoch One Cards

Today is February 1st which means that all the NPB teams opened their training camps today (although since it's already the 2nd in Japan, technically they did it yesterday).  For the third year in a row, Epoch is commemorating the event by releasing the first batch of their on demand Epoch One cards.  There are 71 2026 cards now available, the bulk of which (61 cards) are for the 2025 draft picks for the ten teams that Epoch issues these cards for - the Marines, Dragons, Hawks, Tigers, Fighters, Lions, Eagles, Swallows, Baystars and Giants or everyone other than the Carp and Buffaloes.  For everyone except the Tigers, it's just the draftees from the "regular" phase of the draft but the Tigers players include the two players they took in the ikusei portion.  These will be the first cards for many of these players, beating out their BBM Rookie Edition cards by several weeks.  And no, there's no card for Rintaro Sasaki, the first round pick of the Hawks as he has not signed with the team.

The remaining ten cards are for players who changed teams over the winter.  This includes Kenta Maeda, who returned to NPB after ten years in the US and signed with the Eagles as well as Hikaru Itoh (joined the Eagles), Toshiki Abe (Dragons), Go Matsumoto (Giants), Takahiro Norimoto (Giants), Hiroya Shimamoto (Fighters), Haruki Nishikawa (Fighters), Kohei Arihara (Fighters), Hiyu Motoyama (Tigers) and Torai Fushimi (Tigers).

This is the ninth year that Epoch has issued their Epoch One cards and I'm kind of amazed that everything about them has remained the same.  They're still just 500 yen apiece (including domestic shipping) and are only available for three days.  What's also apparently remained the same, unfortunately, is that there's no way to order these directly from overseas.

Spring Is Coming...Isn't It?

My part of the world got dumped on with a bunch of snow and ice on Sunday and the temperatures have dropped into the Arctic range so I want to focus on some recent announcements for card sets that will be coming out when the weather will hopefully be a bit warmer.

- I had made a prediction in my wrap up of Epoch's 2025 card sets that last year's edition of the Holographica set, one of their annual collaborations with the OB Club, was going to be delayed until March of 2026.  I was correct - the set will be released on March 14th.  This is another of Epoch's "ultra high end sets" with each six card box retailing for 16,500 yen (about $107).   Each box is guaranteed to include two autographed cards.  I don't think the full checklist has been settled on yet but there are at least 59 cards in the base set, each with a parallel version, and something like four different varieties of autographed cards.  Players in the set include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Yamamoto and Tsutomu Wakamatsu.

- BBM is issuing a box set dedicated to Munetaka Murakami called "Kiseki".  Each box will contain 37 cards which will include the 36 card base set plus one "special" insert card which could be a parallel card, one of ten different memorabilia cards or one of five different autographed cards.  The set will be out in mid-March.

- Jumping ahead a few months, BBM is releasing the 2026 edition of their 1st Version set in early May.  The details for the set look pretty much the same as it's been for every year since 2015.  There's the usual 324 player/manager cards (27 for each team), the 12 team checklist cards and the 36 "Cross Something" cards that will be continued in the 2nd Version set later in the year - this year the Something is "Forest".  That makes a total of 372 cards in the base set.  Nine cards for each team have several different facsimile autograph parallels.  There are also parallel versions for 71 of the rookie cards (or all the rookie cards).  There are three varieties of short printed photo variants - each team has a card with a rare "secret" version, a card with a rarer "ultra secret" version and a card with an even rarer "super ultra secret" version (and they could all possibly be variants for the same player).  There are two non-premium insert sets - "New Wonder" (12 cards - one rookie per team) and "Japonism" (12 cards - one per team) - and four serially numbered premium insert sets - "Amazing" (12 /50 cards - one per team), "Promising" (12 /50 cards - one per team) "Cross Foil Signing" (6 cards - all members of the Giants) and "3D Cross Forest" (12 cards - one per team as you probably guessed).  Some of the insert sets will probably have parallel versions but I don't see anything about them yet.  There are both autograph and memorabilia cards available, including cards with multiple autographs and cards with memorabilia from multiple players.  There will also be "buyback" autographs available.

- Bandai is returning to the NPB Collectible Card Game market for the first time since their final Owners League set back in 2015.  The new game is called "Professional Baseball Fan Stars" and appears to be a mobile game.   Bandai will be releasing two sets of cards in late March - a Central League Vol.1 set and a Pacific League Vol.1 set - in boxes containing ten packs containing seven cards each.  Both sets will have 120 cards - 48 "Normal", 36 "Rare", 24 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare" (which will break down to 4 "Normal", 3 "Rare", 2 "Star Rare" and 1 "Super Star Rare" for each team).  I'm assuming there will be additional "volumes" released as the year goes on.  I don't know if this means that Bushiroad will not be continuing the "DreamOrder" cards but I kind of think it does - there are no new releases mentioned on their website.

- Bandai, of course, collaborated with Namco the past two years to produce the very fun "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection" sets which were distributed with bags of kaki no tane, a snack food.  The two are teaming up again this year to release more of the Collectible Card Game "Fan Stars" cards.  There will be 36 cards in the set - 12 "Normal", 12 "Rare" and 12 "Star Rare".  There are parallel versions of the "Star Rare" cards available.  The set will be released in April.

More 2026 Releases

There's been a couple new set announcement recently, with one of the sets actually being scheduled for release next week, so I figured it was time to do a quick round up of them.

- Calbee is releasing yet another "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" set next week on January 27th.  "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" is a mobile game and this will be the third set that Calbee's done as a tie-in.  This looks like it's a follow-on to the set Calbee released at the beginning of December as the card numbers in the new set are starting where that set ended (and now that I look more carefully at the card from that set that Kenny sent me, I see it says "Series 1" on it).  This new set will have 49 cards - 24 "2025 Prospi Selection", 24 "2025 Anniversary Players" and one "secret" card.  I think the "2025 Prospi Selection" cards (which I assume is something from the game) have kira parallels available while the "2025 Anniversary Players" cards have kira and/or facsimile signature parallels.  Not counting the "secret" card, there are four cards per team.  There's some big names in the set including Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Hayato Sakamoto and Teruaki Sato.  It somewhat surprisingly includes Munetaka Murakami who I would have thought couldn't be a on an NPB card set for active players but clearly the licensing details aren't what I thought they were.  The checklist is kind of surprisingly heavy on foreign players with ten total including Raidel Martinez and Livan Moinelo.  What's a bit odd is at least three of those foreign players are, like Murakami, no longer the property of the teams they are listed with.  Tayron Guerrero is no longer a Chiba Lotte Marine and Tyler Austin and Trevor Bauer are no longer Yokokama DeNA Baystars.  I believe that this is the first time Bauer has appeared on a card in any of the major Japanese card manufacturers and I suspect it will be the last, at least as an active player.

- The Eagles annual team issued set has been issued by Epoch the past few years and I'm starting to wonder if it should still be considered a "team issued" set.  When the 2025 edition of this set was announced, I assumed it was the 1st Version set with a 2nd Version set to be released later in the year.  That turned out to not be the case so I won't make that mistake with this year's edition which will be released on February 11th.  The base set will contain 77 cards of active players, including development players.  I believe that the 2025 draft picks/2026 rookie class are included.  There are silver and gold facsimile signature parallels of each of these cards.  There are three insert sets - "Key Performances", "Mound Star" and "My Routine" and autographed cards of all the players with the exception of any development players who were not 2025 draft picks (if that makes sense).  There are also Rui Muneyama uniform cards along with the somewhat ubiquitous "GEM" premium insert cards in both "White" and "Black" varieties. 

- TIC (aka "Hits" or "Produce 216") is issuing their first "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set since their Hawks set last year and, not surprisingly, it's again for the Hawks.  Once again, there's 32 oversized cards available - 16 "normal" and 16 "special with foil autograph".  There's 16 players listed so everyone has a "normal" and a "special" card.  There are real autographs available as well.  This year's edition will be released on March 28th.

2025 In Review - Epoch

There weren't many surprises with Epoch's card sets in 2025.  They issued 18 sets, one fewer than they had in 2024 - although two of these sets had "2024" cover dates and there's at least one 2025 set that won't be published until next month (and I suspect there'll be another "2025" set after that too).

2025 was the eighth year of Epoch attempting to compete with BBM to be the premier card company in Japan (Calbee and Topps are non-contenders) and I feel their efforts are continuing to fall flat.  Their flagship "NPB" set dropped in size again.  What had been a 432 or 444 card set up until 2024 had dropped in size to 348 last year and to 240 this year.  The "NPB Luxury" set - a high end set using a similar design but a different checklist and photos (and with all the base set cards being serially numbered) - also dropped in size from 108 in 2024 to 36 cards.

Epoch also released their "Pacific League Rookies" box set for the eighth consecutive year but there weren't any major changes to that set - it still contained all the 2024 non-ikusei draft picks for the six Pacific League teams.

Epoch once again issued "reasonably priced" team sets called "Premier Edition" for eight of the NPB teams.  Each set had between 37 and 54 cards and sometimes contained cards for OB players as well as active ones.  The teams Epoch did sets for were the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Lions, Swallows and Tigers which were exactly the same teams they did in 2024.

Similarly, Epoch issued their ultra high-end active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets for the same four teams that they had in 2024 - the Giants, Hawks, Marines and Tigers.  Another one of their ultra high-end sets - "Pacific League Premier Edition" - was back for the tenth straight year - it predates Epoch's initial serious challenge to BBM in 2018 by two years.

The two sets that slipped from 2024 until March of 2025 were both collaborations with the OB Club.  One was the annual ultra high-end "Holographica" set while the second was one of Epoch's few surprises in 2025 - a reasonably priced box set called "Japan National Baseball Team Career Achievements" which featured retired players who had been members of the National team over the past quarter century or so.  The announcement of the set was the first clue that Epoch had taken over the Samurai Japan license, at least temporarily.

Epoch has already announced that the 2025 edition of "Career Achievement", one of Epoch's other annual collaborations with the OB Club, won't be released until the end of January.  There hasn't been an announcement yet about the 2025 edition of "Holographica" which makes me suspect that it again won't be released until March.

Epoch's on-line, on-demand Epoch One cards were back again for their eighth season.  There were ultimately 1321 cards done in 2025 for ten of the twelve NPB teams - everyone except the Carp and Buffaloes.  Additionally, as part of Epoch's tenure as the Samurai Japan license holder, they issued Epoch One cards for the Samurai Japan teams that took on the Netherlands in March and Korea in November.  There were 34 cards issued in all - 17 for each set of games.  As it turns out, Topps also issued six Topps Now cards for the friendlies against Korea so maybe the Samurai Japan license isn't as exclusive as I thought.

Munetaka Murakami Epoch One Cards

I mentioned the other day that I had a number of Epoch One cards of Munetaka Murakami.  I actually have 14 in all (along with a 2023 promo card) which is the most I have of any one player.  I can't say that I set out to get that many of him - it's just that his Epoch One cards have tended to have really attractive photos so I've picked them up.

Murakami has a lot of Epoch One cards.  TCDB lists 119 between 2019 and 2024 and a quick eyeball count of the Epoch One website (TCDB does not have the 2025 cards listed) came up with another 11 2025 cards.  (It's a little frustrating that there doesn't appear to be any way to do a search on the Epoch One website.)  So I have a little more than a tenth of his 130 Epoch One cards (not counting the various other Epoch One varieties - "Holospectra", "Signature DECO", etc).  50 of his 130 cards were released in 2022, the year he hit 56 home runs and won the Triple Crown.  I don't know if he has the most Epoch One cards of any player but it wouldn't surprise me if he did.

I thought I'd do a quick post to show off the Epoch One cards of his that I have - you'll see what I mean about how attractive a lot of the photos are.  I've included on each of these what the event each card represents - some are more mundane then others.

This first card commemorates his first ever walk off grand slam on July 2, 2020:

2020 Epoch One #120

He stole three bases in a game on November 5th, becoming the first player to do so in 41 years:

2020 Epoch One #642

This next card is for him hitting his 13th home run of the 2021 season:

2021 Epoch One #264

The next two cards commemorate him hitting home runs in five consecutive at bats over two games from July 31 to August 2, 2022 (the Swallows were off on August 1st).  The first card shows the three home runs on July 31 while the second card shows the second home run (and fifth overall) from August 2:

2022 Epoch One #601

2022 Epoch One #615

This card is for his 41st home run of the 2022 season, He reached 100 RBIs in this game, his 103rd of the season, the fastest any Swallow had ever reached that milestone:

2022 Epoch One #667

This card commemorates his 56th home run of the 2022 season and is actually a promo card from the following season:

2023 Epoch One Promo

Late in Game Three of the Final Stage of the Climax Series in 2022, Murakami beat out an infield single with two outs and the bases loaded, helping the Swallows rally to eliminate the Tigers:

2022 Epoch One #956

In 2023, he homered in his first at bat of the season:

2023 Epoch One #032

I'm not entirely sure what happened in this next card but I think with the score tied late in the game against the Carp on April 2nd, Murakami hit a ball that he thought was a home run but the wind kept it in the ballpark at Jingu.  The defense, however, misplayed the ball and Murakami ended up scoring what proved to be the winning run for the Swallows.  He got credit for a double and a two base error.  

2023 Epoch One #037

He hit his 17th home run of the 2023 season on July 22nd:

2023 Epoch One #555

He hit his first home run of the 2024 season on April 14th:

2024 Epoch One #222

Five days later, he hit his third home run of the season.  It was his first that year at Jingu Stadium and the solo shot in the eighth inning put the Swallows up for good against the Baystars:

2024 Epoch One #271

He hit his 23rd home run of the 2024 season on August 24:

2024 Epoch One #919

This final card commemorates him hitting his 30th home run on September 20th, becoming the fourth player in club history to hit 30 home runs in four consecutive seasons.  The card shows him celebrating with Jose Osuna:

2024 Epoch One #1033

I know I promised a post with all his Samurai Japan cards as well - I'll get to that when I get a chance.

2026 Is Almost Here

Every year around now I suddenly realize that there's only a handful of days left before the new year.  Part of what causes this epiphany is when the first card sets of the new year get announced.  There've been three announcements for 2026 sets so far so let's get to them.

- Actually this first announcement isn't "technically" a 2026 set.  While Epoch's "Career Achievement" set won't be released until January 31st, this is the 2025 edition of their annual ultra high end collaboration with the OB Club.  It seems like this set (and the "Holographica" one, of which the 2025 edition has not been announced yet) gets delayed into the year following it's "cover date" each year.  Each box of this year's edition will contain six cards (including two autographed cards) and retail for 18,150 yen (about $116).  The base set contains 60 cards and each card has a serially numbered "hologram" parallel.  There are four varieties of autograph cards - "Authentic" (56 cards, off hand don't know who the four players in the base set that don't have autographs are), "Tribute To The Past" (20 cards), "Baseball Greats" (12 cards) and "Baseball Autographs" (22 cards).  Everyone in the set are OB players and include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Akiyama and Kazuo Matsui.

- "Rookie Edition", BBM's annual draft pick set, is back for its 24th edition.  There's no real changes from the past few years.  The base set contains 126 cards - 114 cards for the 2024 draft picks and twelve "New Face" subset cards - because 126 is already divisible by three, there was no need for BBM to add one or two "list of draft picks" cards.  The draft picks include both the 73 players taken in the regular phase and the 43 players taken in the ikusei (development player) phase.  The twelve first round picks will again have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variations and all the regular phase draftees will have various foil signature parallels.  There are three types of insert cards - "Starting Point" (12 cards), "Close Relationship" (nine cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (this is listed as being nine cards but I suspect it's actually only two cards featuring the 2025 Rookies Of The Year Misho Nishikawa and Kota Shoji).  There are autographed cards available for the draftees although I believe they are only available as exchange cards.  The set will be released in late-February.

- BBM's annual set for retiring players will also be out in late February.  Once again the set will not only include baseball players but retiring athletes in other sports including wrestling, swimming, soccer and boxing.  BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set this year but it will be sold as a box set with n+1 cards where n is the base set size.  The extra card will be a "special" insert card that will feature an autograph of one of the retiring players - either foil or authentic.  Some of the baseball players in the set will be Hisayoshi Chono, Sho Nataka and Shingo Kawabata.  

Ending 2025 On A (Mostly) High (End) Note

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".

KBO Catchup and End Of The Year Releases

It's only been a little over two weeks since I last did a round up of newly announced releases but Dan Skrezyna - aka Korean Cardboard - contacted me last week to let me know there were a couple new KBO releases.  So I thought I'd get caught up on those as well as cover a couple newly announced NPB sets.

- SCC released "KBO Sensation" at the end of August.  I think this is a higher end set.  I'm a little confused about the details as Dan's post on BlueSky has different information then what he's put up on TCDB.  Of course, it would help if SCC had some useful information on their website but, hey, you can't have everything.  I'm going to assume what's on TCDB is the accurate information.  The base set has 182 cards and there's some sort of parallel but I'm not sure if all the base set cards have parallel versions.  There's six different varieties of insert cards - "Chrome" (50 cards), "Wave" (40 cards), "Impact" (40 cards), "Tropical" (10 cards), "Rookie" (33 cards with a 1-of-1 parallel) and "Rookie Of The Year" (1 card).  There are also jersey cards, patch cards, sticker autograph cards and on-card autograph cards available.  It looks like each box retails for 120,000 won (around $86) and is guaranteed to contain one autograph cards, one memorabilia card (either a jersey or a patch) and one "Chrome" insert card.

- About three weeks after releasing "KBO Sensation", SCC released another KBO set called "KBO Collection Plus".  They put a little more detail on their website and Dan's put the information for the set up at TCDB.  The set has a 115 card base set and there's two associated sets that could be considered either inserts or parallels - 52 "All Star" cards and 50 "Hologram" cards.  The reason I'm a bit confused about what they should be considered is that they use the same card numbers as the base set but they use a completely unrelated design.  Further confusing matters is that the "Hologram" cards have a parallel version too.  50 players also have autographed cards - both facsimile and real ones - that also use the same numbering system as the base set which is really confusing but kind of par for the course for SCC's KBO sets.

- This year's edition of "Rookie Edition Premium", BBM's annual box set for the top rookies of the season, will be released on November 1st.  Each box contains 38 cards - the 36 card base set plus two "premium" insert cards.  The base set contains three cards for each team which aren't necessarily the top three picks from last year's draft.  (I should point out that "rookie" in this case is the baseball card definition - players taken in the 2024 draft - rather than the "eligibility for the Rookie Of The Year award" definition.)  The "premium" insert cards could be autographed cards (either sticker or on-card), memorabilia cards (including patch and bat knob) and "booklets" - although I'm not sure if those have multiple autographs or multiple pieces of memorabilia (or both).  As you might expect because each box has two hits, they're retailing for 16,000 yen or around $108.

- I guess that last year's "Lions Collection" box set featuring the team's alternate uniform that they collaborated with the Japanese fashion line "New Yorker on and also featuring cards of team members wearing street clothes was popular enough that BBM decided to do a similar set this year.  "Lions Bouquet" is a 46 card box set that will be released towards the end of November.  Each box contains the 45 card base set, a "special" insert card and one of 11 tin badges.  The base set is split up into three parts - 16 "Bouquet-style" cards showing players in street clothes, 18 cards showing players in the "Lions Summer Blue" alternate uniforms and 11 "Peko-chan & player illustration" cards.  Peko-chan is the mascot for the Fujiya candy company - it's a girl with pigtails.  I'm not sure but I think these eleven cards are drawings and the tin badge in the box matches one of these cards.  The possible "special" insert cards include foil "facsimile" autographed cards, real autographed cards, and exchange cards for memorabilia cards.

- 2025 is BBM's 35th year doing baseball cards.  It will also feature the 4000th issue of Shukan (Weekly) Baseball, published by Baseball Magazine Sha, BBM's parent company, at some point this fall.  To celebrate both of these events, BBM is releasing a set called something like "35th Anniversary & Weekly Baseball Issue 4000 Commemorative Special Edition" in late December.  The base set will contain 240 cards, split evenly between OB players and active players - although 12 of the active player cards are for rookies and will use the 1991 BBM design.  I'm assuming this set will follow the usual "same number of cards per team" format (although BBM's "25th Anniversary" set from 2015 did not) so there'll be 20 cards per team (with Kintetsu and Rakuten combined probably).  The OB player list is interesting.  Previous BBM anniversary sets were limited to post-1991 players but with Shukan Baseball's archives going back to 1958, it really opens up the number of players available.  Some of the pre-1991 OB players include Sadaharu Oh, Koichi Tabuchi, Keishi Suzuki, Masayuki Kakefu and Suguru Egawa.  The set will have three insert sets - "Cross Ocean" (24 OB players), "Dream Team" (24 active players, I assume it's using the 1998 "Dream Team" insert design like the 30th Anniversary set did) and "Combined" (12 cards with an OB player paired with an active player from the same team).  There are also memorabilia cards, all of which appear to feature multiple players as there are "combo", "triple" and "quartet" ones listed.  And, of course, there are autograph cards for both the OB and active players as well as ones that are listed as "Shukan Baseball Cover Autograph" which I guess is an autographed reproduction of a Shukan Baseball cover shrunk to baseball card size.  I was kind of hoping that the base set cards would be reproductions of Shukan Baseball covers but I'm guessing that it'll only be for these autographed cards.

- Epoch is releasing their second of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets on November 8th (a week after their first one comes out).  Three card boxes of the "Marines Stars & Legends with Memorabilia" set will retail for 16500 (about $112).  The base set has 36 cards - 32 for active players (and manager Masato Yoshii) and just four for OB players (Seiya Inoue, Toshiaki Imae, Masahide Kobayashi and Tomoya Satozaki).  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.  All the memorabilia cards are bat and/or batting glove cards for three 2025 rookies - Misho Nishikawa, Ryusei Miyazaki, and Yu Tatematsu.  There are four varieties of individual bat cards - "core", "grip", "barrel" and "knob" - along with a card featuring a bat fragment for all three players.  There are two varieties of individual batting glove cards - "piece" and "strap" - along with a card featuring a batting glove piece from all three players.  There are also individual cards that feature both a bat and glove relic for each player.  There are also five varieties of autographed cards available.  All 36 players have an "authentic" autograph card while the four OB players also have a "Legendary" autograph card.  I think the remaining autograph cards are all for the active players - "Star" (five cards), "Rookie" (six cards) and "Baseball" (20 cards).  If we assume that there's no overlap between the players in each group, there's an additional autograph for 31 of the 32 active players.  I'd guess that the one guy who doesn't have a second autograph card is Yoshii but I don't know that for sure.