2024 Bandai Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection

Last year, Bandai teamed up with Namco to release a 36 card set featuring caricatures of players.  The set was called something along the lines of "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection".  "Deforme" refers to an art style of a figure having a big head and small body (H/T Nippon Baseball Retro) and you'll see in a minute that that's a very apt description of the artwork on these cards.  The cards were given away with bags of something called kaki no tane which is a bar snack consisting of soy crackers and peanuts (although the bags don't have peanuts).  

Generally I'm not a big fan of art cards or cards that feature artwork rather than photographs.  I was somewhat surprised that I liked the look of these when they were initially published in July last year and thought about picking up the complete set.  The prices were pretty high though so I settled for asking Ryan to just pick up a couple singles for me.  Sometime over the winter, however, I came across a complete set on Yahoo! Japan Auctions selling for around 3000 yen and asked Ryan to get it for me.  It was yet another item in the box I got from him last month.

If you've been paying any attention at all to NPB sets, you'll have already guessed that the 36 card set is split evenly among the twelve NPB teams with each team having three players in the set.  There's a further breakdown of the cards, though, as each team has an "Ultra Rare" card, a "Rare" card and a "Normal" card.  Here's a sample card of each type:

#BDC01-H01 (Ultra Rare)

#BDC01-O02 (Rare)

#BDC01-E03 (Normal)

You'll notice that the cards are numbered by team, with each number being "#BDC01-X##" where X is a one letter prefix to identify the team and ## is either 01, 02 or 03.  It turns out that all the cards with an 01 number are "Ultra Rare", all the cards with an 02 number are "Rare" and all the 03 cards are "Normal".

The cards themselves are 2 3/8 inches by 3 3/8 inches in size, a little smaller than the standard card size.  They're made of plastic instead of cardboard so they have kind of an odd feel.  They also have rounded corners which don't really come across in my scans.

The set contains many big stars from NPB in 2024, including Yuki Yanagita, Tetsuto Yamada, Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Make, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hiroya Miyagi and Chusei Mannami along with veterans Tsuyoshi Wada and Masahiro Tanaka.  I did think it was kind of odd that the set didn't include two of the biggest names in NPB, though, as neither Munetaka Murakami nor Roki Sasaki are in the set.  Murakami is in the 2025 edition (more about that in a minute) but Sasaki, obviously because he's no longer in NPB, is not.

Here's a bunch more example cards - all either "Super Rare" or "Rare":

#BDC01-L02

#BDC01-C02

#BDC01-D02

#BDC01-F01

#BDC01-Y01

#BDC01-T01

#BDC01-B01

Bandai and Namco released the 2025 version of this set back at the end of March, just in time for the beginning of the baseball season.  One of the unexpected things that Ryan included in the box was 12 cards from it, a third of the set.  The new set is pretty much identical in design as the original one - same three card designs, same numbering scheme (except the card numbers start with "BDC2"), same card size, same set size - but, naturally, with a different roster of players.  The one big change with the 2025 set is that there are "facsimile signature" parallel versions of the "Ultra Rare" cards (which I guess would make them "Super Ultra Rare"?)

This year's set includes the afore-mentioned Murakami along with Kensuke Kondoh, Takeya Nakamura, Tomoya Mori, Hayato Sakamoto and Shosei Togo.  It also includes some foreign players which the 2024 set did not - Gregory Polanco, Domingo Santana and Livan Moinelo.  I think the biggest name who has not yet had a card in one of these sets is Teruaki Sato of the Tigers.  Here's a couple of the 2025 cards (one "Ultra Rare" and two "Normal"):

#BDC02-F01

#BDC02-D03

#BDC02-T03

I should mention that the card backs all use the same design, regardless of whether the card is "Ultra Rare", "Rare" or "Normal" or which set the card is from.  Here's an example back from each sets:

#BDC01-M02

#BDC02-G02

I really like these cards - they're just a lot of fun.  I probably won't break my vow of not getting any new sets to try to complete the 2025 set but I might try to at least get the Nakamura and Sakamoto cards from it.  You can see all the cards from both the 2024 and 2025 sets over at Jambalaya.

Ryan also sent me a couple unopened packs from the 2024 set:

Ryan also made good on his promise (threat?) to send me an unopened bag of kaki no tane.  Opinions seem to be divided some on the quality of this snack with Sean not being a fan (although he's softened his stance some) and others like Kenny and Fuji being fans.  I had never tried it so Ryan sending me an unopened bag (albeit one from last year that had passed it's "freshness" date on the package) was an opportunity to see what the fuss was about.  

My wife was game for trying it as well, so we opened up the bag and poured its contents into a bowl so that we could share it:

Since it's a common bar snack, we each opened a can of a Pale Ale from Sierra Nevada to have the full effect.  Our verdict...meh.  It wasn't bad so I don't think I agree with the hate but I don't feel any need to get any more of it either.  I will say the taste was somewhat familiar but I haven't been able to place it.  My wife and I both agreed that the traditional version of it with peanuts would probably have been better.  Maybe the next time I go to Japan, I'll try to hit a bar and try it there.

Yet Another Zippy Zapping

I was traveling for work all of last week and when I returned home late Friday night, I discovered that I had once again received an envelope from Kenny - aka Zippy Zappy - in Japan.  I was somewhat surprised to get something from Kenny since I had just gotten an envelope from him two weeks ago but I am not complaining.  I don't know what it was that I did that made me a target for Kenny's generosity but I am always grateful for what he decides to send me.

When I saw the envelope, I turned to my wife and said "I bet he sent me one of those new 'Pro Baseball Deforme' cards."  I opened it up and discovered I was correct:

2025 Bandai Pro Baseball Deforme #BDC02-C03

These cards are issued by Bandai and are distributed with bags of kaki no tane which is a bar snack consisting of soy crackers and peanuts (although the bags don't have peanuts).  I have not tried them myself but Kenny likes them.  Sean, on the other hand, is not a fan.

And, if you're curious what "deforme" means, Nippon Baseball Retro explains in a comment on Sean's post that it refers to the art style of a figure having a big head and small body.  Thanks for the explanation!

As always, thanks for the card, Kenny!

Calbee, Some Team Sets, the return of "Pro Baseball Deforme" and the incredibly shrinking Epoch NPB set

I feel like I just did a roundup of new sets but it's actually been almost five weeks since the most recent one.  There've been a bunch of set announcement since then so let's dig in...

- One of the sets may have already been released.  Volume 2 of the "Pro Baseball Deforme" "metallic placards" was supposed to have been released by the end of March.  These are cards from Bandai that feature player caricatures.  The cards are being given away with bags of what's basically a bar snack called kaki no tane which I have not had myself but I've heard mixed reviews about.  Like the first set that was released last summer, there are 36 cards in this set.  I don't know if these are numbered in continuation of the first set (i.e. if they're numbered 37-72 or just 1-36). (UPDATE - The numbering of the cards is more complicated then I had remembered.)

- As promised, Calbee announced the information about this year's Series One set (including the checklist) a couple days ago.  It will be released on May 5th (about six weeks later than usual) and is roughly the same smaller size that Calbee's sets have been the past few years.  There will be 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 21 "Title Holder" subset cards and six checklist cards, making the base set just 87 cards.  The theme of the checklist cards is mascots which I find unfortunate.  Not that I have anything against mascots per se but the checklist cards in Calbee sets frequently boasted some of the best photographs but that won't be happening this year.  In addition to the base cards, there are also the insert/premium subset "Star" (24 cards) and "Legend" (three cards for retiring players - Norichika Aoki, Tsuyoshi Wada and T-Okada) cards.    The checklist also lists a twelve card "Most Strikeouts" set that I assume is the box set available through Calbee's Amazon store but there's nothing that actually says that.  I'm guessing the late release date and the fact that there's six checklist cards (Calbee usually does twelve total checklists, one featuring each NPB team) implies that there will again only be two Series this year instead of the three they'd done up from 2004 up until 2022.

- Speaking of disappointingly small flagship sets, Epoch has announced that the 2025 edition of their "NPB" flagship set will only have 240 cards (20 per team).  This is quite the drop from the 432 cards that the set had between 2018 and 2023 and is even less than the 336 that last year's set had (I'm kind of ignoring the 12 OB cards that a number of the sets have as I'm focusing on the cards of the active players).  All 240 cards will have a parallel version and there will be a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set (which I assume will feature two players from each team).  There will be 12 "GEM" serially numbered insert cards (not sure of what the print runs are for them) and 170 different autograph cards which will feature both active and OB players (despite there not being any OB players in the base set).  The set will be released on June 21st.

- Epoch has also announced the first three of their "Premier Edition" team sets for 2025.  The Swallows set will have a 39 card base set and will be released on April 26th, the Lions set will have a 37 card base set and will be released on May 3rd and the Fighters set will have a 46 card base set and will be released on June 7th.  The Swallows and Fighters sets will include OB players as well as active ones.  All the base cards have a "hologram" parallel version.  Each set has the same batch of inserts - 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, each set has a bunch of associated autographed cards that are slightly different between the sets.  The Swallows set has 36 "Authentic Autograph" cards, six "Star Autograph" cards, five "Rookie Autograph" cards, two "Legendary Autograph" cards and two "Combo Autograph" cards.  The Lions set has 37 "Authentic Autograph" cards, five "Star Autograph" cards, seven "Rookie Autograph" cards, eight "Record Breaker Autograph" cards and three "Combo Autograph" cards.  The Fighters set has 37 "Authentic Autograph" cards, five "Star Autograph" cards, six "Rookie Autograph" cards, nine "Legendary Autograph" cards and three "Combo Autograph" cards.  

- Not to be left out, BBM announced the next three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2025.  I'll pretty much just repeat the general details for the sets that I've said before - 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.  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Eminent.  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	Eminent	Other
Mid May	Dragons	66	Mascot(1), Generation Of Wonders(5), Combination Of Same School (3), To Pitch In 60 games (3), Positive Pink (3)	Core Players (9), Challengers (3), New Uniform Number (3), Rookies (3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards
Late May	Lions	65	Mascot(1), Resurrected Lions (6), Challengers To Change (3), Promising Classmates (3), Attention Units (3)	Claw My Way (9), Batmen Begin (3), Great Again (3), Rookies (3)	24	15		Autograph cards
Late May	Giants	63	Promising Young Species (6), Veterans (3), Combination (3), Three Pillars (3), Main Hitters (3)	Giants Pride 2025(15), Rookies(3)	24	15	12	Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex (3), Super Metallic Giants (9) plus memorabilia cards

Remember that the Giants don't allow their players to have authentic autographed cards.

- The Lions are celebrating their 75th Anniversary in 2025 and BBM is commemorating it in a somewhat unique way.  Instead of a single "Lions 75th Anniversary" set, BBM is instead issuing the set in four separate box sets.  The first instance - "Lions 75th Anniversary Series Vol. 1" - will be released in late April and will be followed by additional instances in June, July and September.  I don't know if each volume will have the same make up but Vol. 1 at least will contain 36 cards - a 35 card base set plus one "special insert card" which could be either a facsimile or authentic autograph.  There will be 19 OB players spanning from 1950 to 1990 along with 16 active players.

- Bushiroad has announced expansion packs for two more teams for their DreamOrder collectible card game.  The booser packs for the Swallows and Baystars will be released on May 24th.  Each pack is 500 yen and contains five cards.  I'm entirely sure what cards are available in the packs but it appears for each team there's some number (between 10 and 16) of "super rare" (SR) cards, ten "rare" cards and thirty "common" cards.  I think that some of the cards are "reprints" which I assume means they're essentially duplicates of cards that were previously issued.  There are also parallel and "special" parallel cards.  OB players are available as well as active players.  This leaves only the Marines and Fighters without 2025 booster packs and I assume those will be announced in the near future.

Food With A Side Of Cards

One of my big regrets from my 2019 trip to Japan was that I missed out on opportunities to get baseball cards with my food at the ballparks.  I ultimately only got cards at two different stadiums on that trip.  I was determined to do better on this trip and I think I succeeded.

You might ask why I would expect to get baseball cards with a meal at a ballpark?  Most (if not all) NPB teams sell "bento boxes" - basically a meal in a little tray - that feature a player or coach on it.  Usually the player has somehow endorsed the particular meal.  Deanna had told me years ago that these meals frequently included baseball cards (she frequently has tweets with the theme "Deanna Eats/Drinks Things To Get Baseball Cards") so I knew to be on the look out.

My first game on this trip was Seibu Dome, home of my biggest meal-related disappointment from last trip.  I had seen the stand selling bento boxes outside the ballpark, identified the meal I want to buy and incorrectly assumed they were available INSIDE the ballpark.  I could have gotten my hand stamped and gone back outside when I discovered my mistake but I didn't feel like going against stream of Carp fans coming into the ballpark.

I was determined not to make that same mistake again but I need not have worried - the Lions have redone some things around the gates to their ballpark and the bento stand is now inside the gate.  Ryan and I were able to easily pick up meals before heading to our seats.  We both bought the Takeya Nakamura bento:

I don't remember what everything in the box was but it wasn't bad.  The one gripe I have about all the bento boxes is that they're served cold.

You can see the baseball card I got in the top photo but here's a scan of it:

I was at Jingu Stadium the next night but I was unable to find any baseball cards with the meals - there were some "player collaboration" meals but they had little flags with the player's picture on them, not cards.  The following week, though, Deanna discovered there was a gyoza stand there that had Munetaka Murakami cards.

Two days later, I was up in Sendai and I again had success.  There was a bento stand just after you had your ticket scanned and I picked up the Hideto Asamura meal:

Deanna confirmed for me that this was beef tongue which is apparently a region delicacy in Tohoku.  Having had it at the ballpark made me feel better about not looking too hard for it for dinner that night.

As you can see from the lower photo, the baseball card is transparent plastic.  It's harder to tell that in this scan:

It did not appear that the bento boxes in Nagoya or Osaka had baseball cards with them although I have to admit, I didn't ask so it's possible I missed them.  My next success story was at Koshien Stadium.  There were two key differences here.  The first is that I think the baseball cards were only available for a few week - these signs were up in various places around the ballpark:

Normally there's just a player key chain being given away with the meal.

The second thing is that the card (and the key chain) are in a sealed pack and you don't know who you're going to get - it isn't necessarily the player on the box.  I bought the Takumu Nakano meal but neither the card or the keychain were Nakano:

The food was pretty good though.

The card I got was Yusuke Ohyama and the keychain was Shoki Murakami:

The next day I was in Hiroshima.  I had eaten lunch at an okonomiyaki place before going to the ballpark so I wasn't too interested in getting a bento box.  They did have them but the baseball cards with them were postcard sized player caricatures so I wasn't all that interested in them anyway: 

I asked at both Fukuoka Dome and Tokyo Dome if the bento boxes had baseball cards and was told "no" in both places.  I did get a "rice bowl with steak" at Tokyo Dome that included a Hayato Sakamoto sticker (I had gotten an order of bibimbap in Fukuoka that was endorsed by Yugo Bandoh but there was no sticker or card of him with it):

For the past few years the Lotteria stands at the Chiba Marine Stadium have given away baseball cards if you buy the appropriate hamburger meal and I scored a card here.  The postcard sized card comes in a sealed pack so, like at Koshien, you don't know who you've got a card of until you open the pack.  I got Takashi Ogino but decided to give the card to Steve since Steve had gotten the tickets for Deanna, Noal and I to join him at the game and Ogino is Steve's favorite player.  And also since the card was oversized, I wasn't sure if I could get it back to my hotel in one piece so maybe I wasn't being completely altruistic.

My final game on the trip was in Yokohama and I was again successful.  I got a Keita Sano bento box featuring a pork meal:

Here's a scan of the card:

I always say that one of the great unknowns about Japanese baseball cards is how many fan club and/or team issued cards there are.  This is another aspect of it that I believe is even less cataloged.

Team Sets, A Food Set And The Return Of Topps

Once again, time has flown by since the last time I did a round up of the newly announced sets so without further ado, let's get to it...

- BBM has announced four more 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.  The Treasure, Esperanza and Magical inserts are all serially numbered.  (If it's not obvious, the "Regular Cards", "Treasure", "Esperanza" and "Magical" columns are the total number of those type of cards in each set.) 

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Magical	Other
Mid June	Fighters	68	Newcomer(4), Main Pitcher (4), Main Batters (5)	Main Players(9), New Players(3), Promising Young Players(3), Reliable Helpers(3)	24	15		Autograph  cards
Mid June	Buffaloes	68	Orimen(5), Combination Cards(5), New Forces(3)	Main Players(9), Evolution of High School Graduate Pitchers(3), Promising Young Pitchers(3), Rookie(3)	24	15	24	Autograph & memorabilia cards
Mid June	Dragons	69	Year Of The Dragon(5), New Dynamics(3), Native-born Aichi Hero(4)	Go Be Brave(9), Rising Dragon(6), Bright Future(3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards
Mid June	Swallows	69	New Forces(4), Promising Young Sluggers(4), Veterans(3), Mascot(1)	Core Players(9), Featured Breakout Candidates(6), Rookie(3)	24	15		Autograph cards

This brings the total number of team sets BBM has released or announced this year to ten with only the Carp and Eagles, which coincidentally are two of the three teams that Epoch has just announced sets for...

- Epoch announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets - the Fighters and the Carp.   The Fighters set will be out on June 1st and will have 45 cards in its base set - I think nine of those are OB players.  The Carp set will be released on June 29th and has a base set of 39 cards, only one of which is an OB player (looks like it's a card of manager Takehiro Arai when he was a player - Arai also has a manager card in the set).  All the base cards have a "holo foil" parallel and both sets have the usual gazillion insert cards that are too numerous to list here.  Both sets feature five different types of player autograph cards - "Authentic", "Star", "Rookie", "Legendary" and "Combo".

- Epoch and the Eagles are continuing their team up with what had previously been a Eagles team issued set.  The Eagles 2nd Version set will be released on June 29th and will have a base set of 76 cards.  This is essentially a "comprehensive" team set that not only has cards for all the players on the team's 70 man roster but also the ikusei players.  There's two insert sets - a six card set that I'm not positive but I think has OB players and a seven card "Crimson Heat" set.  There's a bunch of different autographed cards available and "rookie bib" memorabilia cards.  There's also a special version of Epoch's ubiquitous "Gem" serially numbered insert cards.  

- Topps is returning for their fourth year of doing NPB sets.  Their "flagship" NPB set will be released on May 24th.  Like the previous three sets, this one has a base set of 216 cards (18 cards per team) and features a design that is similar to the MLB flagship set's design.  (Actually just eyeballing the sample cards in the promo materials, it looks like the design is nearly identical this year.)  There's the usual plethora of parallels and five different insert sets - "Topps1959", "Superstar Blueprints", "Sokkyu", "Warp Speed" and "Sayonara!".  The "Topps1959" (which I assume puts current players into the 1959 Topps design) has 24 cards while the other four have 12.  There will be "featured legend" autograph cards again although they haven't announced who the players are yet - I'm assuming that again there will be no current NPB players among them, just retired players or active in MLB.

- Bandai is issuing an interesting looking food issue set in July.  It's a set of 36 "metallic placards" that will be given away in packages of what I think are rice crackers.  I'm assuming that there's three cards per team.  What's kind of cool about these cards is that they don't have photos - they have player caricatures.  While that's normally not something I'm a big fan of, I find these to be really appealing:

 

Nippon-Ham Home Run Sausage Cards

From 2016 to 2019, Nippon-Ham, the owners of the Fighters, teamed up with BBM to issue "Home Run Sausage" cards.  These cards only included players from the Fighters and were issued with either a pack of some foul tasting sausage or a not bad tasting mini-cheesecake.   The sets were essentially "comprehensive" team sets for the Fighters as I think all the players on the team's 70-man roster had cards in the set (at least at the time the sets were released) although there were separate series in each year so some players had multiple cards.

One of the things I like about these cards is that the four years they were issued coincided with the four years that the Fighters did early spring training in Arizona.  Many of the cards in the first series each year feature photos that were obviously taken there.  (I assume it's a coincidence that the cards were issued in the same time period that the team training in Arizona but who knows?)

There were a bunch of "Home Run Sausage" cards in that box from Ryan that I received last week.  I had asked him to pick up card lots for Haruki Nishikawa and Takuma Nakashima that both featured the Nippon-Ham cards as well as some team issued cards and some promos.  Additionally I asked him to pick up an 11 card lot from the 2018 set.

I'm going to show off all the cards from these sets that I got.  It'll be pretty obvious which lot was the source for the card.  First up is the sole 2016 card I got:

There was also only one 2017 card:

Between the 11 card lot and both player lots, I ended up with 13 cards from the 2018 set:

Actually make that 14 as these was also this "Premium" card of Nakashima from the 2018 set:

For 2019 we were back to only one card again: