BBM has not updated their website in over a month - there's something like eight sets from them in the pipeline right now (including this year's 1st Version) but I will continue to wait to post anything about them until they put it on their website (you can see the sets for yourself over at Discount Niki and/or Hot Box). In the meantime, there's a couple other releases to talk about.
- Series One from Calbee hits the stores on or around March 21 (that's the official release date but don't be surprised to see them showing up online a few days before that). The base set has 72 player cards (six per team but you already had guessed that) along with 18 "Title Holder" cards, 10 "Legend" cards (for retired players) and four checklist cards (looks like the theme for them is the 2015 post-season). As usual there's a 24 card "Star" insert set (and I'm assuming that it has the gold facsimile parallels but there's nothing on the web page about them). There do not appear to be any "lucky" cards or premium box set available with the set. 3/19 UPDATE - as I speculated, the cards are already available. The 10 card "Legend" subset is actually a premium subset/insert set so the base set is 94 cards (72 player cards + 18 "Title Holder" cards + 4 checklist cards).
- I've been wondering for a while if Epoch somehow acquired Front Runner as the Dragons X Mizuno set that Epoch put out last fall strongly resembled some Front Runner sets from 2014 (and Front Runner hadn't issued any sets since spring last year). Epoch has announced a Lions "Stars & Rookies" set that will be released in April which looks kind of similar to the "Heroes & Rookies" box sets that Front Runner did last spring. The big difference is that the new set is not a box set - it looks kind of like a high end set. Each box (which has an MSRP of 10,800 yen or around $95) contains two mini-boxes. Each mini-box contains five "regular" cards and one autograph card. The base set has 29 cards and there's a myriad of possible autograph cards. It will be interesting to see if Epoch releases similar sets for other teams the way that Front Runner did the last couple years.
Showing posts with label Front Runner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Front Runner. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Package From Ryan
I love getting packages in the mail from Ryan of This Card Is Cool. Ryan is always on the lookout for stuff for me and he's pretty good about finding it. And sometimes he picks up stuff that he figures I'd be interested in, even if I haven't said anything. And he's usually right - I am interested in it. So packages from Ryan always contain good stuff - some things that I know I'm getting and some things that are a surprise.
The package I got from him yesterday was no exception. I'd been eagerly awaiting this package since he told me he'd be shipping me stuff when he was back in the States in early February AND since he'd found a couple cards that I was looking for from the 2000 Upper Deck Olympics set (that he busted a couple boxes of a few months back). Sure enough, there were two of the five cards of the baseball team that I don't have in the box:
The card of Akahoshi is especially cool as it is one of the rare "pre-rookie" cards of a player in Japan. Akahoshi was playing for JR East of the industrial leagues when he was selected for the Olympic team - he wasn't drafted by the Tigers until October of 2000.
I ask Ryan to track down opened box sets for me as they can generally be had extremely cheaply - frequently 500 yen or less - but that price skyrockets when I have to pay kuboTEN fees. Ryan found three box sets for me - one he'd been looking for for most of 2015 but the other two were released late in the year.
In January of every year since 2011 BBM has published a box set commemorating the players who have retired during the previous year. I usually refer to this set as "Farewell" but the translation of the title is more along the lines of "Regret at Parting Ball Players". Last year's set contained 36 cards celebrating the careers of 32 players (four players - Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Alex Ramirez and Tomoya Satozaki - had two cards each in the set). The photos in the set are usually action shots from when the player was active (and may be from a year previous to last year) or from their retirement ceremony. Beyond the players mentioned already, the set includes cards for Masao Kida, Shugo Fujii, GG Satoh, Yoshinori Tateyama and Tomochika Tsuboi.
Hrioki Kuroda's return to Japan and the Hiroshima Toyo Carp last year was documented in a box set called "Homecoming" that was released in November. It's an 18 card set and each card appears to commemorate some event from the 2015 season. There's a card for each of the 11 wins he got and for reaching some milestones (like his 500th game between MLB and NPB).
Epoch published a Dragons box set in November as some sort of cross promotion with Mizuno. The set was called "Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno" and was very similar to some similarly named sets that Front Runner put out in 2014. In fact the "R" symbol to indicate a rookie was identical in this set to the symbol used on the Front Runner cards. The set has 24 cards but only featured 12 players. Each player has two cards in the set. The set includes Masahiro Yamamoto, Kazuhiro Wada, Michihiro Ogasawara, Masahiro Araki, Takuya Asao and Daisuke Yamai.
Lastly, Ryan included a handful of loose cards from a couple Front Runner box sets that I didn't have. He sent four cards from the 2014 Lions Signature Edition set (including one of Takeya Nakamura, one of my favorite players) and ten cards from the 2015 Giants Game Used Bat set (which was similar to the Dragons X Mizuno set in that it had two cards for each player in the set).
Ryan sent out a number of packages when he was back in the States. Jason got some cool stuff from him as well.
Thanks as always Ryan! And let me know what I owe you for these!
The package I got from him yesterday was no exception. I'd been eagerly awaiting this package since he told me he'd be shipping me stuff when he was back in the States in early February AND since he'd found a couple cards that I was looking for from the 2000 Upper Deck Olympics set (that he busted a couple boxes of a few months back). Sure enough, there were two of the five cards of the baseball team that I don't have in the box:
 |
| 2000 Upper Deck Olympics #229 |
 |
| 2000 Upper Deck Olympics #220 |
I ask Ryan to track down opened box sets for me as they can generally be had extremely cheaply - frequently 500 yen or less - but that price skyrockets when I have to pay kuboTEN fees. Ryan found three box sets for me - one he'd been looking for for most of 2015 but the other two were released late in the year.
In January of every year since 2011 BBM has published a box set commemorating the players who have retired during the previous year. I usually refer to this set as "Farewell" but the translation of the title is more along the lines of "Regret at Parting Ball Players". Last year's set contained 36 cards celebrating the careers of 32 players (four players - Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Alex Ramirez and Tomoya Satozaki - had two cards each in the set). The photos in the set are usually action shots from when the player was active (and may be from a year previous to last year) or from their retirement ceremony. Beyond the players mentioned already, the set includes cards for Masao Kida, Shugo Fujii, GG Satoh, Yoshinori Tateyama and Tomochika Tsuboi.
 |
| 2015 BBM Farewell #09 |
 |
| 2015 BBM Farewell #13 |
 |
| 2015 BBM Homecoming #12 |
 |
| 2015 BBM Homecoming #18 |
 |
| Epoch Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno #01 |
 |
| Epoch Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno #15 |
 |
| 2014 Front Runner Lions Signature Edition #04 |
 |
| 2015 Front Runner Giants Game Used Bat Edition #02 |
 |
| 2015 Front Runner Giants Game Used Bat Edition #09 |
Thanks as always Ryan! And let me know what I owe you for these!
Friday, January 1, 2016
2015 In Review - Other Card Companies
There were 14 card sets issued by companies other than BBM or Calbee this past year. This is down quite a bit from the 19 that were issued last year.
The main reason for the drop off can be attributed almost entirely to Front Runner (Frontier International). After issuing 11 team based box sets in 2014, they only released four sets in 2015 and none after April. They released the "Giants Game Used Bat" set in February, the Lions and Buffaloes "Heroes And Rookies" sets in March and the Baystars "Heroes And Rookies" set in April. Not only were their no releases from them after April but Epoch issued at least two sets late in the year that look like sets that Front Runner would have released. I do not know if Front Runner went out of the card printing business, if they got bought up by Epoch or whether this is all part of their marketing plan. We'll see if they reappear this year.
Epoch on the other hand increased the number of sets they did from five in 2014 to seven this past year. They started in march with an OB box set celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Tigers first (and only) Nippon Series championship in 1985. They followed that up in June with a box set for the Carp that celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the "Red Helmet" era for the team. This set was the first Epoch set in recent years to feature active players as well as OB players. They released another set in June in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) called "National Record Holders" which was an ultra high end set along the lines of BBM's "Master Of Insert" set. Each 15,000 yen (~$125) box contained one pack of five serially numbered cards including two autograph cards. Moving into the fall, Epoch published three team based box sets that only contained active players - no OB players at all. The sets were Baystars "Game Used Uniform", Swallows "Victory Memorial" and "Dragons X Mizuno". The Baystars set seems very similar to me to some of the Front Runner sets from 2014 (including the "R" for rookie indicator on the cards) and Dragons set continues a theme done by the Carp and Marines in 2014. The final Epoch set was released in December and it was another ultra high end set done with the JBPA. Called "MVP Of The Year", this set follows the same MO as their earlier ultra high end set - 15,000 yen for a box containing one pack of five serially numbered cards including two autographed cards.
Sports Graphic Number issued one set this year, the same as they did last year (I mistakenly thought that a set issued by the Swallows last year was issued by them). As usual, their set was dedicated to a single player - this time is was Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Baystars. Also as usual, this was a pack based set that featured very little text and lots of "puzzle cards" - pictures taking up multiple cards.
The final two card sets I want to list here are team issues but they appear to have been distributed nationally* - they are listed both by Jambalaya (which was located in Fukushima most of the year but moved to Hachioji in Tokyo Prefecture in November) and Hot Box (which I think is located in Matsuyama in Shikoku). The first set is a team set for the Eagles while the second set highlights three players from the Swallows that were selected by a fan vote - Tetsuto Yamada, Shingo Kawabata and Shohei Tateyama. The Swallows set looks so much like a Sports Graphic Number set that I thought that the set they did last year actually was a Sports Graphic Number set.
*So including team issued cards on this list is kind of problematic - I mean I have cards from the Buffaloes and Lions fan club sets from 2015 and I'm aware of ones for the Hawks and Tigers. I assume other teams have them but I have no idea what they are. So I'm pretty much only listing sets that appear on Jambalaya and Hot Box's websites. Don't ask me what I'll do if a set shows up on one but not the other...
The main reason for the drop off can be attributed almost entirely to Front Runner (Frontier International). After issuing 11 team based box sets in 2014, they only released four sets in 2015 and none after April. They released the "Giants Game Used Bat" set in February, the Lions and Buffaloes "Heroes And Rookies" sets in March and the Baystars "Heroes And Rookies" set in April. Not only were their no releases from them after April but Epoch issued at least two sets late in the year that look like sets that Front Runner would have released. I do not know if Front Runner went out of the card printing business, if they got bought up by Epoch or whether this is all part of their marketing plan. We'll see if they reappear this year.
Epoch on the other hand increased the number of sets they did from five in 2014 to seven this past year. They started in march with an OB box set celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Tigers first (and only) Nippon Series championship in 1985. They followed that up in June with a box set for the Carp that celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the "Red Helmet" era for the team. This set was the first Epoch set in recent years to feature active players as well as OB players. They released another set in June in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) called "National Record Holders" which was an ultra high end set along the lines of BBM's "Master Of Insert" set. Each 15,000 yen (~$125) box contained one pack of five serially numbered cards including two autograph cards. Moving into the fall, Epoch published three team based box sets that only contained active players - no OB players at all. The sets were Baystars "Game Used Uniform", Swallows "Victory Memorial" and "Dragons X Mizuno". The Baystars set seems very similar to me to some of the Front Runner sets from 2014 (including the "R" for rookie indicator on the cards) and Dragons set continues a theme done by the Carp and Marines in 2014. The final Epoch set was released in December and it was another ultra high end set done with the JBPA. Called "MVP Of The Year", this set follows the same MO as their earlier ultra high end set - 15,000 yen for a box containing one pack of five serially numbered cards including two autographed cards.
Sports Graphic Number issued one set this year, the same as they did last year (I mistakenly thought that a set issued by the Swallows last year was issued by them). As usual, their set was dedicated to a single player - this time is was Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Baystars. Also as usual, this was a pack based set that featured very little text and lots of "puzzle cards" - pictures taking up multiple cards.
The final two card sets I want to list here are team issues but they appear to have been distributed nationally* - they are listed both by Jambalaya (which was located in Fukushima most of the year but moved to Hachioji in Tokyo Prefecture in November) and Hot Box (which I think is located in Matsuyama in Shikoku). The first set is a team set for the Eagles while the second set highlights three players from the Swallows that were selected by a fan vote - Tetsuto Yamada, Shingo Kawabata and Shohei Tateyama. The Swallows set looks so much like a Sports Graphic Number set that I thought that the set they did last year actually was a Sports Graphic Number set.
*So including team issued cards on this list is kind of problematic - I mean I have cards from the Buffaloes and Lions fan club sets from 2015 and I'm aware of ones for the Hawks and Tigers. I assume other teams have them but I have no idea what they are. So I'm pretty much only listing sets that appear on Jambalaya and Hot Box's websites. Don't ask me what I'll do if a set shows up on one but not the other...
Saturday, May 16, 2015
More 2014 Front Runner Sets
Christmas came early at my house this year - yesterday I received both a box full of goodies from Ryan and a box with my latest Yahoo! Japan Auction wins from kuboTEN. So I'll try to start blogging a little bit more than I have the last few weeks to try to cover a bunch of the new stuff.
I thought I'd start out with a couple of Front Runner Trading Cards sets from last year that Ryan picked up for me. But before I do, I want to mention that I added a spreadsheet listing all the Front Runner box sets to the Set Index.
The first of the sets is the Giants Stars & Legends set. This was the first set that Front Runner has done with the Giants - their previous sets had only been for the Carp, Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. This set was also a tie-in for the Giants 80th Anniversary last year.
The base set contains 30 cards (the largest Front Runner base set so far). There are 12 cards for the "Stars" - the 2014 Giants players (and manager Tatsunori Hara) - and 18 cards for the "Legends" - retired Giants players. The "Stars" include pretty much who you'd expect - Shinnosuke Abe, Hayato Sakamoto, Shuichi Murata, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hisayoshi Chono for example. The "Legends" are players from the 60's through the 90's - guys like Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Isao Shibata, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Isao Harimoto, Suguru Egawa, Hiromi Makihara and Masumi Kuwata. I'm not sure what Front Runner's criteria for picking the retired players for this set was (other than could they still sign an autograph) so it's hard to say if anyone should have been included but wasn't.
The front of each card shows the picture of the player in front of a tinted background - blue for the current players and gold for the retired players. The back of the card shows the photo with it's original un-tinted background. Most of the photos are in color but there's a couple in black and white:
It's not a bad little set. Front Runner was able to attract enough "Legends" (including the two biggest ones in Oh and Nagashima) to make the set worthy of the name - I felt that their 2013 Carp Stars & Legends set that didn't have either Koji Yamamoto or Sachio Kinugasa in it was really not worthy of the name. My only real complaint with the set itself is that the player's name is very difficult to read on some of the cards.
The big issue with this set though really has nothing to do with this set. It's that the BBM Giants 80th Anniversary set that came out a few months later has pretty much everything that this set has plus more.
Ryan did a post on this set when it came out and all the cards can be seen here.
The other Front Runner set I got yesterday was the Carp Season Summary set. In 2013, Front Runner did three Season Summary sets (for the Carp, Buffaloes and Baystars) which were among my favorites of their sets. The Carp one was the only Season Summary set for 2014 and while I still like it, it's not as good as the 2013 versions.
The 2013 sets were an attempt to actual chronicle the season. The backs of most of the player cards referenced the events of a particular game during the season. Since a player could have have had more than one good game, some of the players had multiple cards in the sets (for example Kenta Maeda appeared four times in the Carp set). This set only has one card for each of the 24 players included in the set and the backs of the cards don't carry any details about any particular games.
The cards themselves are fairly attractive. The set contains most of the big names for the Carp - Kenta Maeda, Shota Dohbayashi, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Masato Akamatsu, Bryan Bullington, Kila Ka'Aihue and Brad Eldred. Here are some examples:
The top borders were cut a bit tight by my scanner.
Ryan did a post about this set a few months back and Jambalaya has all the cards on-line.
I thought I'd start out with a couple of Front Runner Trading Cards sets from last year that Ryan picked up for me. But before I do, I want to mention that I added a spreadsheet listing all the Front Runner box sets to the Set Index.
The first of the sets is the Giants Stars & Legends set. This was the first set that Front Runner has done with the Giants - their previous sets had only been for the Carp, Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. This set was also a tie-in for the Giants 80th Anniversary last year.
The base set contains 30 cards (the largest Front Runner base set so far). There are 12 cards for the "Stars" - the 2014 Giants players (and manager Tatsunori Hara) - and 18 cards for the "Legends" - retired Giants players. The "Stars" include pretty much who you'd expect - Shinnosuke Abe, Hayato Sakamoto, Shuichi Murata, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hisayoshi Chono for example. The "Legends" are players from the 60's through the 90's - guys like Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Isao Shibata, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Isao Harimoto, Suguru Egawa, Hiromi Makihara and Masumi Kuwata. I'm not sure what Front Runner's criteria for picking the retired players for this set was (other than could they still sign an autograph) so it's hard to say if anyone should have been included but wasn't.
The front of each card shows the picture of the player in front of a tinted background - blue for the current players and gold for the retired players. The back of the card shows the photo with it's original un-tinted background. Most of the photos are in color but there's a couple in black and white:
 |
| #14 |
 |
| Back of #14 |
 |
| #1 |
 |
| #2 |
 |
| #20 |
The big issue with this set though really has nothing to do with this set. It's that the BBM Giants 80th Anniversary set that came out a few months later has pretty much everything that this set has plus more.
Ryan did a post on this set when it came out and all the cards can be seen here.
The other Front Runner set I got yesterday was the Carp Season Summary set. In 2013, Front Runner did three Season Summary sets (for the Carp, Buffaloes and Baystars) which were among my favorites of their sets. The Carp one was the only Season Summary set for 2014 and while I still like it, it's not as good as the 2013 versions.
The 2013 sets were an attempt to actual chronicle the season. The backs of most of the player cards referenced the events of a particular game during the season. Since a player could have have had more than one good game, some of the players had multiple cards in the sets (for example Kenta Maeda appeared four times in the Carp set). This set only has one card for each of the 24 players included in the set and the backs of the cards don't carry any details about any particular games.
The cards themselves are fairly attractive. The set contains most of the big names for the Carp - Kenta Maeda, Shota Dohbayashi, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Masato Akamatsu, Bryan Bullington, Kila Ka'Aihue and Brad Eldred. Here are some examples:
 |
| #08 |
 |
| Back of #08 |
 |
| #07 |
 |
| #22 |
Ryan did a post about this set a few months back and Jambalaya has all the cards on-line.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
New Japanese (and Korean) sets
Once again I've held off on posting about new sets coming out while waiting for BBM to get information about them up on their site and once again I've waited so long that some of the sets I'm waiting to mention are almost out. So let's get caught up a little...
- BBM's Carp team set will be out in mid to late May. It's a pack based set that will have 81 cards in its base set - 70 player cards, 2 BIG COMEBACK cards and 9 SHINING ORDER cards. There will be two nine card insert sets ("Heart & Soul" and "Contenders") and the usual boatload of possible autograph cards. (For the record, Niki has information on the Fighters, Dragons and Tigers team sets but BBM has not put up anything for them yet.)
- Front Runner Trading Cards latest offering is the third in their Heroes & Rookies series - this time it's for the Baystars. This is a box set containing 16 cards - a 15 card base set plus a possible autograph card. As usual, there is a bewildering array of possible autograph cards that includes cards with two, three or four signatures on it. The set is being released on April 29th (or thereabouts).
- Looks like Duael Entertainment is going to continue to publish "Super Star Baseball Cards" for the KBO this season. They posted pictures of the 2015 Season One box to their Facebook page yesterday. The set will be released on April 27. There really aren't any set details available (at least that I know about anyway) but just eyeballing the photos, I suspect that this set will be more similar to the Season Three and Blue Edition sets rather than the Season One and Two sets. That would imply a more expensive ($50-ish) box with a smaller amount of base set cards and more short-print cards. I would be very happy to be wrong about this however.
- BBM's Carp team set will be out in mid to late May. It's a pack based set that will have 81 cards in its base set - 70 player cards, 2 BIG COMEBACK cards and 9 SHINING ORDER cards. There will be two nine card insert sets ("Heart & Soul" and "Contenders") and the usual boatload of possible autograph cards. (For the record, Niki has information on the Fighters, Dragons and Tigers team sets but BBM has not put up anything for them yet.)
- Front Runner Trading Cards latest offering is the third in their Heroes & Rookies series - this time it's for the Baystars. This is a box set containing 16 cards - a 15 card base set plus a possible autograph card. As usual, there is a bewildering array of possible autograph cards that includes cards with two, three or four signatures on it. The set is being released on April 29th (or thereabouts).
- Looks like Duael Entertainment is going to continue to publish "Super Star Baseball Cards" for the KBO this season. They posted pictures of the 2015 Season One box to their Facebook page yesterday. The set will be released on April 27. There really aren't any set details available (at least that I know about anyway) but just eyeballing the photos, I suspect that this set will be more similar to the Season Three and Blue Edition sets rather than the Season One and Two sets. That would imply a more expensive ($50-ish) box with a smaller amount of base set cards and more short-print cards. I would be very happy to be wrong about this however.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
New Non-BBM Stuff
I've seen announcements about seven upcoming BBM sets in various places around the net but since they haven't listed them on their website yet I will instead just catch up on the non-BBM releases that have been announced.
- Front Runner Trading Cards (Frontier International) is apparently renaming their "Rookies & Young Stars" team box sets this year as "Heroes & Rookies" (with a new "HR" logo on the cards). Given that it was a hard sell on some of the players being "young stars", this makes a lot more sense. (Not that there's any need for the set name to be literally true.) The first two of these sets are for the Lions and the Buffaloes. The sets are smaller than in the past - I think there are only 18 cards in each base set. Each box will contain the base set plus one of a bewildering variety of autograph cards - including ones that have two or three signatures on them. Both sets will be out in late March and have an MSRP of 9990 yen (~$84).
- The Tigers are gearing up to celebrate their 80th Anniversary this year (BBM will be doing an 80th Anniversary set). But 2015 is also the 30th Anniversary of the first (and so far only) Nippon Series championship for the Tigers and Epoch is doing a box set to celebrate the milestone. Each box will contain 52 cards - 45 cards for the base set, five parallel cards and two autograph cards. Some of the autograph cards feature two or three signatures. The set will be released in early March.
- Details (and checklist) for Calbee Series One were released last week. It looks like the base set (player cards plus subset/non-premium insert sets) has actually grown a little from the 100 per Series last year to 103 this year (at least for the first Series). Once again there will be 84 player cards (seven per team) which will include several players returning to NPB from MLB (Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroyuki Nakajima and Kensuke Tanaka) and at least one player who switch teams over the winter (Yoshihisa Naruse). There will be three subsets (or non-premium insert sets): a 12 card (one for each team) "Exciting Scene" set, three "Legend Retirement Player" cards (for Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko and Tomoya Satozaki) and four checklist cards (which appear to have a theme of the 2014 post season). The ubiquitous Star (premium) insert set is back which will have (as usual) 24 cards - two for each team. There is also a 24 card "Title Holder" set that is available as some sort of mail in premium (the 24 cards are not divided evenly between the teams) and a "lucky card" of Tomoyuki Sugano - I think it's a 3D style card. I believe that he "lucky card" is available as a redemption from a special card found in the packs. As usual, the cards will be distributed with potato chip bags and will hit the stores on March 23.
- Front Runner Trading Cards (Frontier International) is apparently renaming their "Rookies & Young Stars" team box sets this year as "Heroes & Rookies" (with a new "HR" logo on the cards). Given that it was a hard sell on some of the players being "young stars", this makes a lot more sense. (Not that there's any need for the set name to be literally true.) The first two of these sets are for the Lions and the Buffaloes. The sets are smaller than in the past - I think there are only 18 cards in each base set. Each box will contain the base set plus one of a bewildering variety of autograph cards - including ones that have two or three signatures on them. Both sets will be out in late March and have an MSRP of 9990 yen (~$84).
- The Tigers are gearing up to celebrate their 80th Anniversary this year (BBM will be doing an 80th Anniversary set). But 2015 is also the 30th Anniversary of the first (and so far only) Nippon Series championship for the Tigers and Epoch is doing a box set to celebrate the milestone. Each box will contain 52 cards - 45 cards for the base set, five parallel cards and two autograph cards. Some of the autograph cards feature two or three signatures. The set will be released in early March.
- Details (and checklist) for Calbee Series One were released last week. It looks like the base set (player cards plus subset/non-premium insert sets) has actually grown a little from the 100 per Series last year to 103 this year (at least for the first Series). Once again there will be 84 player cards (seven per team) which will include several players returning to NPB from MLB (Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroyuki Nakajima and Kensuke Tanaka) and at least one player who switch teams over the winter (Yoshihisa Naruse). There will be three subsets (or non-premium insert sets): a 12 card (one for each team) "Exciting Scene" set, three "Legend Retirement Player" cards (for Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko and Tomoya Satozaki) and four checklist cards (which appear to have a theme of the 2014 post season). The ubiquitous Star (premium) insert set is back which will have (as usual) 24 cards - two for each team. There is also a 24 card "Title Holder" set that is available as some sort of mail in premium (the 24 cards are not divided evenly between the teams) and a "lucky card" of Tomoyuki Sugano - I think it's a 3D style card. I believe that he "lucky card" is available as a redemption from a special card found in the packs. As usual, the cards will be distributed with potato chip bags and will hit the stores on March 23.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
New Items
We're in the slow time for Japanese baseball cards. It's been a couple weeks since the last sets were released in 2014 and it'll be a few more weeks until the first sets of 2015 hit the stores. Here's a couple upcoming sets:
- BBM is releasing their annual box set commemorating the players who retired the previous year. I'm never sure what to call this set as it's Japanese title "Sekibetsu Kyuujin" translates to something like "Regret at Parting Ball Players". I decided a while back just to call it "Farewell" in my database. This year's edition features 36 cards in the base set which doesn't mean there will be 36 players in the set - I'm pretty sure each of the previous editions of this set have featured multiple cards for certain players. I don't know for sure who's in the set but the web page lists Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Tomoya Satozaki and Alex Ramirez among others. I think Ramirez will be the first gaijin to ever make this set - I don't expect to see Kevin Youkilis in it. Each box set will contain one "special" card in addition to the base set - looks like there will either be a foil facsimile autograph card (that I assume is a parallel of a card in the base set) or an authentic autograph card. The set will be out January 29.
- BBM's next set commemorates the other end of the career spectrum. The annual Rookie Edition set features all the players taken in last October's NPB draft. This year's base set contains 117 cards - 103 cards for the draftees, 2 kinda-sorta checklist cards and 12 "Then & Now" cards that pair up a draftee and a veteran or OB player. There is a parallel foil signature version of 81 of the draftee cards - I think it's only for the players who were taken in the regular draft as opposed to the ikusei draft. There are two insert sets - a two card "Rookie Of The Year" set including the two award winners from last season (the Marines' Ayumu Ishikawa and the Carp's Daichi Ohsera) and a 12 card "Next Generation" set featuring a top young player from each team. There's also a variety of autograph cards available, both of the draftees and the other players featured in the set. The set will come out in mid-February.
- Front Runner Trading Cards (aka Frontier International) is releasing their first box set for 2015 in either late January or early February. It's called "Yomiuri Giants Game Used Bat" and features 14 cards in its base set. The 14 cards break down as two each for seven Giants players - Shinnosuke Abe, Hisayoshi Chono, Hirokazu Ibata, Yoshiyuki Kamei, Yasuyuki Kataoka, Hayato Sakamoto and Yoshinobu Takahashi. Each set will also contain two premium cards - there are several different types of game used bat cards as well as foil signature parallel cards available.
- BBM is releasing their annual box set commemorating the players who retired the previous year. I'm never sure what to call this set as it's Japanese title "Sekibetsu Kyuujin" translates to something like "Regret at Parting Ball Players". I decided a while back just to call it "Farewell" in my database. This year's edition features 36 cards in the base set which doesn't mean there will be 36 players in the set - I'm pretty sure each of the previous editions of this set have featured multiple cards for certain players. I don't know for sure who's in the set but the web page lists Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Tomoya Satozaki and Alex Ramirez among others. I think Ramirez will be the first gaijin to ever make this set - I don't expect to see Kevin Youkilis in it. Each box set will contain one "special" card in addition to the base set - looks like there will either be a foil facsimile autograph card (that I assume is a parallel of a card in the base set) or an authentic autograph card. The set will be out January 29.
- BBM's next set commemorates the other end of the career spectrum. The annual Rookie Edition set features all the players taken in last October's NPB draft. This year's base set contains 117 cards - 103 cards for the draftees, 2 kinda-sorta checklist cards and 12 "Then & Now" cards that pair up a draftee and a veteran or OB player. There is a parallel foil signature version of 81 of the draftee cards - I think it's only for the players who were taken in the regular draft as opposed to the ikusei draft. There are two insert sets - a two card "Rookie Of The Year" set including the two award winners from last season (the Marines' Ayumu Ishikawa and the Carp's Daichi Ohsera) and a 12 card "Next Generation" set featuring a top young player from each team. There's also a variety of autograph cards available, both of the draftees and the other players featured in the set. The set will come out in mid-February.
- Front Runner Trading Cards (aka Frontier International) is releasing their first box set for 2015 in either late January or early February. It's called "Yomiuri Giants Game Used Bat" and features 14 cards in its base set. The 14 cards break down as two each for seven Giants players - Shinnosuke Abe, Hisayoshi Chono, Hirokazu Ibata, Yoshiyuki Kamei, Yasuyuki Kataoka, Hayato Sakamoto and Yoshinobu Takahashi. Each set will also contain two premium cards - there are several different types of game used bat cards as well as foil signature parallel cards available.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
2014 In Review - Other Card Companies
By my count (looking at Jambalaya's page for the 2014 baseball card sets), there were 19 sets released in 2014 by manufacturers other than BBM and Calbee. This is certainly the most in the past few years and I suspect it's the most in the 25 years or so that BBM has been doing cards.
Epoch released three box sets this year in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (aka the OB Club and the All Japan Baseball Foundation), a relationship that been going on since 2009. The three sets were the Shigeo Nagashima Memorial Treasure set and the OB Club 20th Anniversary sets Volume One and Volume Two. In addition, Epoch also released two box sets with historic themes that did not involve the JBPA - a set commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Carp's first pennant and a set commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the start of the Giants V9 streak (as part of an overall celebration of the Giants 80th Anniversary).
Front Runner Trading Cards (aka Frontier International) stepped up their game quite a bit, going from seven sets in 2013 to eleven sets in 2014. All eleven sets were box sets featuring a single team. There were four "Rookie & Young Star" sets for the Lions, Carp, Buffaloes and Baystars and three "Signature Edition" sets for three of those teams - the Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. They also did two team sets (for the Carp and the Marines) that somehow tied in with Mizuno. They did yet another box set for the Carp called "Season Summary" and also got into the "celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Giants" act by putting out a "Stars & Legends" set that featured both active and OB Giants.
Sports Graphic Number put out two sets this season. The first one was dedicated to Tomonori Maeda, the Carp star who retired at the end of the 2013 season. The second one was a first for the company as it featured three different Swallows players - Tetsuto Yamada, Shingo Kawabata and Yuhei Takai. Every other Sports Graphic Number set has only featured a single player. Like the previous sets, both of these sets featured little text and included cards that went together to form a picture.
Rounding out the list of sets, the Eagles once again released a pack based team set. I just noticed that the Jambalaya store is located in Fukushima prefecture in Tohoku, so that might be why they've been selling the Eagles team issued set the past two years. Other teams may also be issuing sets.
The totals for the year were 70 sets issued - 48 by BBM, 3 by Calbee (I'm going to treat each Series as a separate set since they are sold that way) and 19 by others. On a personal note, I think I have (or will have eventually) 35 of them.
Epoch released three box sets this year in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (aka the OB Club and the All Japan Baseball Foundation), a relationship that been going on since 2009. The three sets were the Shigeo Nagashima Memorial Treasure set and the OB Club 20th Anniversary sets Volume One and Volume Two. In addition, Epoch also released two box sets with historic themes that did not involve the JBPA - a set commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Carp's first pennant and a set commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the start of the Giants V9 streak (as part of an overall celebration of the Giants 80th Anniversary).
Front Runner Trading Cards (aka Frontier International) stepped up their game quite a bit, going from seven sets in 2013 to eleven sets in 2014. All eleven sets were box sets featuring a single team. There were four "Rookie & Young Star" sets for the Lions, Carp, Buffaloes and Baystars and three "Signature Edition" sets for three of those teams - the Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. They also did two team sets (for the Carp and the Marines) that somehow tied in with Mizuno. They did yet another box set for the Carp called "Season Summary" and also got into the "celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Giants" act by putting out a "Stars & Legends" set that featured both active and OB Giants.
Sports Graphic Number put out two sets this season. The first one was dedicated to Tomonori Maeda, the Carp star who retired at the end of the 2013 season. The second one was a first for the company as it featured three different Swallows players - Tetsuto Yamada, Shingo Kawabata and Yuhei Takai. Every other Sports Graphic Number set has only featured a single player. Like the previous sets, both of these sets featured little text and included cards that went together to form a picture.
Rounding out the list of sets, the Eagles once again released a pack based team set. I just noticed that the Jambalaya store is located in Fukushima prefecture in Tohoku, so that might be why they've been selling the Eagles team issued set the past two years. Other teams may also be issuing sets.
The totals for the year were 70 sets issued - 48 by BBM, 3 by Calbee (I'm going to treat each Series as a separate set since they are sold that way) and 19 by others. On a personal note, I think I have (or will have eventually) 35 of them.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Front Runner Rookie & Young Star Sets
November has been a busy month for me - between packages from Ryan, Hiro and some other stuff I ordered from various places I've had quite an influx of cards this month. I think it's somewhat appropriate (and also way overdue) to finish the month by talking about the last of the box sets that Ryan included in his package that I got back at the beginning of the month - the Rookie & Young Stars sets from Front Runner (aka Frontier International) from both 2013 and 2014.
Each Rookie & Young Star set is a box set containing cards for one particular team. The base set for each set is pretty small - between 24 and 27 cards. Each set includes possible autograph cards and (in several cases) short printed rookie cards. Rookie & Young Stars is kind of a misnomer for the sets as the sets tend to include the same number of "established" stars as "young" stars. And of the six sets I'm going to discuss in this post, only one of them actually contains any rookies in the base set. Some of the sets also include OB players. Generally, each set uses a slightly different format between the "Stars", the "Young Stars", the "Rookies" and the OB players ("Legends").
Front Runner issued three Rookie & Young Star sets last season (along with four other sets). The teams featured were the Lions, the Baystars and the Buffaloes. I posted about the Baystars set back in March (when I got the last package from Ryan) but I didn't get the Lions and Buffaloes sets until this package. The Lions set contains 27 cards split between "Stars" (9 cards) and "Young Stars" (18 cards). It's the only one of these sets that does not include the team's manager. The Buffaloes set also contains 27 cards - 11 "Stars" (including manager Hiroshi Moriwaki), 6 "Young Stars", 6 "Rookies" and 4 "Legends". Here are samples of each type of card in each set:
The cards for the base sets for both the Lions and the Buffaloes sets can be seen at Jambalaya and Ryan did a post on the Buffaloes set.
Front Runner did four of these sets this year (along with at least seven other sets), adding the Carp to the fold along with returning champions the Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. All four sets came out in March and April, which means that a number of the players who just joined the team in the sets are shown not playing, but rather wearing a team jersey over street clothes, presumably at the press conference announcing the player joining the team.
The Lions set is the only set that actually has a different format for the "Stars" (8 cards) vs the "Young Stars" (14 cards) and "Lions Legends" (2 cards).
The remaining four sets each have a different format than each other, but the cards in the various subsets have only minor variations in format. Regardless of the team, each of the "Young Star" cards has a big colored square behind the player. The Carp set has 8 "Stars" (plus the manager), 11 "Young Stars" and 3 "Legends". The Buffaloes set has 15 "Stars" (plus the manager) and 9 "Young Stars". The Baystars set has 9 "Stars" (plus the manager) and 14 "Young Stars".
The back of all the cards in all four team sets uses the same design:
I have to admit that when I first saw the 2014 cards on-line, I wasn't very enamored of them. I felt they were kind of ugly. But they actually look a lot better when you're holding them in your hand than they do on your computer.
You can see all the cards in each of the sets over at Jambalaya (Lions, Carp, Buffaloes, Baystars) and Ryan has done a post for each set as well in which he covers all the "special" cards available with the sets (Lions, Carp, Buffaloes, Baystars).
Each Rookie & Young Star set is a box set containing cards for one particular team. The base set for each set is pretty small - between 24 and 27 cards. Each set includes possible autograph cards and (in several cases) short printed rookie cards. Rookie & Young Stars is kind of a misnomer for the sets as the sets tend to include the same number of "established" stars as "young" stars. And of the six sets I'm going to discuss in this post, only one of them actually contains any rookies in the base set. Some of the sets also include OB players. Generally, each set uses a slightly different format between the "Stars", the "Young Stars", the "Rookies" and the OB players ("Legends").
Front Runner issued three Rookie & Young Star sets last season (along with four other sets). The teams featured were the Lions, the Baystars and the Buffaloes. I posted about the Baystars set back in March (when I got the last package from Ryan) but I didn't get the Lions and Buffaloes sets until this package. The Lions set contains 27 cards split between "Stars" (9 cards) and "Young Stars" (18 cards). It's the only one of these sets that does not include the team's manager. The Buffaloes set also contains 27 cards - 11 "Stars" (including manager Hiroshi Moriwaki), 6 "Young Stars", 6 "Rookies" and 4 "Legends". Here are samples of each type of card in each set:
 |
| Lions #07 (Star) |
 |
| Lions #17 (Young Star) |
 |
| Buffaloes #02 (Star) |
 |
| Buffaloes #16 (Young Star) |
 |
| Buffaloes #24 (Rookie) |
 |
| Buffaloes #18 (Legend) |
Front Runner did four of these sets this year (along with at least seven other sets), adding the Carp to the fold along with returning champions the Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars. All four sets came out in March and April, which means that a number of the players who just joined the team in the sets are shown not playing, but rather wearing a team jersey over street clothes, presumably at the press conference announcing the player joining the team.
The Lions set is the only set that actually has a different format for the "Stars" (8 cards) vs the "Young Stars" (14 cards) and "Lions Legends" (2 cards).
 |
| Lions #06 (Star) |
 |
| Lions #19 (Young Star) |
 |
| Lions #23 (Lions Legend) |
The remaining four sets each have a different format than each other, but the cards in the various subsets have only minor variations in format. Regardless of the team, each of the "Young Star" cards has a big colored square behind the player. The Carp set has 8 "Stars" (plus the manager), 11 "Young Stars" and 3 "Legends". The Buffaloes set has 15 "Stars" (plus the manager) and 9 "Young Stars". The Baystars set has 9 "Stars" (plus the manager) and 14 "Young Stars".
 |
| Carp #06 (Star) |
 |
| Carp #13 (Young Star) |
 |
| Carp #22 (Legend) |
 |
| Buffaloes #02 (Star) |
 |
| Buffaloes #19 (Young Star) |
 |
| Baystars #10 (Star) |
 |
| Baystars #13 (Young Star) |
 |
| Baystars #07 |
You can see all the cards in each of the sets over at Jambalaya (Lions, Carp, Buffaloes, Baystars) and Ryan has done a post for each set as well in which he covers all the "special" cards available with the sets (Lions, Carp, Buffaloes, Baystars).
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Lots Of New Stuff
I've gotten a little behind in reporting the upcoming sets - there are a whole bunch coming up.
- BBM's annual Rookie Edition Premium set will be out late this month (I think on the 30th). As usual, this is a box set containing (I think) 50 cards - 48 cards in the base set and two (I think) special cards. The base set has 36 "regular" cards (3 per team) and 12 "Golden Hope" cards (1 per team I assume). The special cards include parallels of the base cards, memorabilia cards, autograph cards and (again I think) some sort of 3D card.
- BBM has two OB team based boxed sets coming out this week, one for the Hankyu Braves and one for the Nankai Hawks. These are apparently the initial sets for a new series of sets BBM is doing called ACHIEVEMENT. Like most other BBM box sets, each set contains the base set plus one special card - definitely facsimile and authentic autographs available, maybe others. The Braves base set has 30 cards in it while the Hawks base set has 29 cards. I'll be curious to see where BBM goes with this series as both of these teams have been mined a great deal for OB sets in the last few years.
- Traditionally BBM's first set for each year is their Historic Collection set, usually released in November. This is the case again for 2015 - the theme this year for the Historic Collection set is "Memories Of Uniforms" and apparently is going to highlight famous uniform designs of the past as well as alternate uniforms from the past few years. It will be (as usual) a pack based set with 144 cards in the base set. a 24 card insert set and lots of possible autograph cards. The 144 cards will be split between 72 cards of active players and 72 cards of OB players. The set will be out in late November.
- Epoch is not letting the fact that BBM has released an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants stop them from releasing their own. Epoch's version is a box set that is focused on the V9 Giants, the team that won the Nippon Series nine straight years from 1965 to 1973. Each set contains 49 cards - 46 base cards, two parallel cards and one autographed card. From the ad sheet, it looks like the set contains everyone you'd think it should - Oh, Nagashima and Masaichi Kaneda being the biggest names. The set will be out in early November. The price on the ad sheet is 9800 yen but Discount Niki is listing it for 10,584. I suspect that this might be a big seller.
- Front Runner is releasing yet two more box sets - another Mizuno cross promotion set, this time with the Marines and a Carp Season Summary set. The Marines set will have just 17 cards in it but I'm not quite sure how many are in the base set and how many special cards are in the set. My best guess is that there are 15 base set cards plus one autographed rookie card and one card that could be an autograph card, a memorabilia card or an autographed memorabilia card. The Carp set (the third Carp set done by Front Runner this year) has 24 cards in the base set plus a possible autograph (facsimile and authentic) card. The Carp set will be out in late November but the Marines set doesn't have a specific release date, just some time in November or December. Based on last year, I expect that Front Runner will have a couple more Season Summary sets coming out before the end of the year.
- BBM's annual Rookie Edition Premium set will be out late this month (I think on the 30th). As usual, this is a box set containing (I think) 50 cards - 48 cards in the base set and two (I think) special cards. The base set has 36 "regular" cards (3 per team) and 12 "Golden Hope" cards (1 per team I assume). The special cards include parallels of the base cards, memorabilia cards, autograph cards and (again I think) some sort of 3D card.
- BBM has two OB team based boxed sets coming out this week, one for the Hankyu Braves and one for the Nankai Hawks. These are apparently the initial sets for a new series of sets BBM is doing called ACHIEVEMENT. Like most other BBM box sets, each set contains the base set plus one special card - definitely facsimile and authentic autographs available, maybe others. The Braves base set has 30 cards in it while the Hawks base set has 29 cards. I'll be curious to see where BBM goes with this series as both of these teams have been mined a great deal for OB sets in the last few years.
- Traditionally BBM's first set for each year is their Historic Collection set, usually released in November. This is the case again for 2015 - the theme this year for the Historic Collection set is "Memories Of Uniforms" and apparently is going to highlight famous uniform designs of the past as well as alternate uniforms from the past few years. It will be (as usual) a pack based set with 144 cards in the base set. a 24 card insert set and lots of possible autograph cards. The 144 cards will be split between 72 cards of active players and 72 cards of OB players. The set will be out in late November.
- Epoch is not letting the fact that BBM has released an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants stop them from releasing their own. Epoch's version is a box set that is focused on the V9 Giants, the team that won the Nippon Series nine straight years from 1965 to 1973. Each set contains 49 cards - 46 base cards, two parallel cards and one autographed card. From the ad sheet, it looks like the set contains everyone you'd think it should - Oh, Nagashima and Masaichi Kaneda being the biggest names. The set will be out in early November. The price on the ad sheet is 9800 yen but Discount Niki is listing it for 10,584. I suspect that this might be a big seller.
- Front Runner is releasing yet two more box sets - another Mizuno cross promotion set, this time with the Marines and a Carp Season Summary set. The Marines set will have just 17 cards in it but I'm not quite sure how many are in the base set and how many special cards are in the set. My best guess is that there are 15 base set cards plus one autographed rookie card and one card that could be an autograph card, a memorabilia card or an autographed memorabilia card. The Carp set (the third Carp set done by Front Runner this year) has 24 cards in the base set plus a possible autograph (facsimile and authentic) card. The Carp set will be out in late November but the Marines set doesn't have a specific release date, just some time in November or December. Based on last year, I expect that Front Runner will have a couple more Season Summary sets coming out before the end of the year.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Latest New Releases
A couple new card sets have been announced in the last week or so:
- Pretty much as expected, BBM is doing an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. This will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set, a 12 card insert set and assorted autograph cards. The 99 cards in the base set will divided into four subsets - six cards for "History Of Giants", 69 cards of OB Giants, 15 cards for the current team and nine cards for Giants team records. The insert set is called "Giants Heroes". I'll be curious to see if the two most noticeably absent players from the 70th Anniversary set (Masaichi Kaneda and Wally Yonamine) are included this time. I think the set will be out in late October.
- Front Runner has announced two more team based box sets. They are continuing their "Signature Edition" box sets that they had previously done for the Buffaloes and Lions with one for the Baystars. Like the previous sets, the new set will include 22 cards - 20 cards for the base set and (I think) two autographed cards. One of the more interesting things about the autographs is that I think Yulieski Gourriel is one of the players who signed for the set. I'm not sure if any of the Cuban players have been available on an autographed card before. The other set is for the Carp and has some sort of promotional thing going on with Mizuno. I think the set is called something like "Hiroshima Toyo Carp X Mizuno". It's the smallest set that Front Runner has done so far - 17 cards with 15 of those cards making up the base set and the other two cards being potentially autographed and jersey cards. I'm not positive but I think that each box has one autograph card and one jersey card in it. It looks like the press run for the set is limited to 1000 - I'm not sure what the runs have been on Front Runner's previous sets but I suspect that they were more like 5000. Both of these sets will be released in October.
CORRECTION - looking at some of Ryan's posts about Front Runner/Frontier's box sets, it looks like their standard print runs are in the 1000-1500 range, so the Carp sets print run will be in line with what they've done before.
- Pretty much as expected, BBM is doing an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. This will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set, a 12 card insert set and assorted autograph cards. The 99 cards in the base set will divided into four subsets - six cards for "History Of Giants", 69 cards of OB Giants, 15 cards for the current team and nine cards for Giants team records. The insert set is called "Giants Heroes". I'll be curious to see if the two most noticeably absent players from the 70th Anniversary set (Masaichi Kaneda and Wally Yonamine) are included this time. I think the set will be out in late October.
- Front Runner has announced two more team based box sets. They are continuing their "Signature Edition" box sets that they had previously done for the Buffaloes and Lions with one for the Baystars. Like the previous sets, the new set will include 22 cards - 20 cards for the base set and (I think) two autographed cards. One of the more interesting things about the autographs is that I think Yulieski Gourriel is one of the players who signed for the set. I'm not sure if any of the Cuban players have been available on an autographed card before. The other set is for the Carp and has some sort of promotional thing going on with Mizuno. I think the set is called something like "Hiroshima Toyo Carp X Mizuno". It's the smallest set that Front Runner has done so far - 17 cards with 15 of those cards making up the base set and the other two cards being potentially autographed and jersey cards. I'm not positive but I think that each box has one autograph card and one jersey card in it. It looks like the press run for the set is limited to 1000 - I'm not sure what the runs have been on Front Runner's previous sets but I suspect that they were more like 5000. Both of these sets will be released in October.
CORRECTION - looking at some of Ryan's posts about Front Runner/Frontier's box sets, it looks like their standard print runs are in the 1000-1500 range, so the Carp sets print run will be in line with what they've done before.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Upcoming Releases
I've been putting off doing a post on upcoming sets because I've been waiting for BBM to put up information on the Dragons team set on their website. They still haven't but I figure that I've waited long enough that if I wait much longer, the other sets will already be out...
- The second half of BBM's celebration of 80 years of professional baseball in Japan, the 80th Anniversary Batters Edition, will be released on August 23. Like the Pitchers Edition, this will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set. The 99 cards are split between 90 "regular" player cards and 9 "Leader" cards celebrating single season and career batting records (again like the Pitchers Edition). I don't think there are any insert cards in the set (although there are parallels of all the base cards) but there's any number of autographed inserts included in the set. Just eyeballing the checklist in the latest SCM, I don't think either Ichiro or Hiromitsu Ochiai are in the set,
- The aforementioned Dragons team set will be out in mid-August (Niki says August 21). It's a pack based set with 90 cards in the base set. Now I'm going by the print ad in SCM to determine what the names of the subsets are and (of course) they're all in Japanese (as opposed to the Giants team set where all the subsets are titled in English in the print ad), so I'm going to attempt to make a guess based on the sample cards in the ad. There are 77 cards for the players, coaches and manager, four cards for "Fresh, Local Stars", three cards for veterans(?) and three three card "sequential card series". There's a nine card insert set that I have absolutely no idea what the theme is and some number of autographed cards available. UPDATE - BBM finally put something up on their website for the set.
- I've been kind of expecting that at some point this year BBM's going to do an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. Maybe they still will, but I was kind of surprised to see that Front Runner is putting out a Giants Stars And Legends box set. This is a 32 card set with 30 base cards plus one serially numbered insert card and one autographed card. The 30 base cards are split between 12 cards of active players (including manager Tatsunori Hara) and 18 cards of OB players. Unlike the Carp Stars and Legends set Front Runner did last year, it looks like Front Runner got most if not all the biggest OB names - Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto, Isao Shibata, Suguru Egawa and Masumi Kuwata. Front Runner appears to be marketing this as an 80th Anniversary set but I'm still hoping BBM does a larger set before the end of the year. This set will be released sometime in August.
- The second half of BBM's celebration of 80 years of professional baseball in Japan, the 80th Anniversary Batters Edition, will be released on August 23. Like the Pitchers Edition, this will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set. The 99 cards are split between 90 "regular" player cards and 9 "Leader" cards celebrating single season and career batting records (again like the Pitchers Edition). I don't think there are any insert cards in the set (although there are parallels of all the base cards) but there's any number of autographed inserts included in the set. Just eyeballing the checklist in the latest SCM, I don't think either Ichiro or Hiromitsu Ochiai are in the set,
- The aforementioned Dragons team set will be out in mid-August (Niki says August 21). It's a pack based set with 90 cards in the base set. Now I'm going by the print ad in SCM to determine what the names of the subsets are and (of course) they're all in Japanese (as opposed to the Giants team set where all the subsets are titled in English in the print ad), so I'm going to attempt to make a guess based on the sample cards in the ad. There are 77 cards for the players, coaches and manager, four cards for "Fresh, Local Stars", three cards for veterans(?) and three three card "sequential card series". There's a nine card insert set that I have absolutely no idea what the theme is and some number of autographed cards available. UPDATE - BBM finally put something up on their website for the set.
- I've been kind of expecting that at some point this year BBM's going to do an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. Maybe they still will, but I was kind of surprised to see that Front Runner is putting out a Giants Stars And Legends box set. This is a 32 card set with 30 base cards plus one serially numbered insert card and one autographed card. The 30 base cards are split between 12 cards of active players (including manager Tatsunori Hara) and 18 cards of OB players. Unlike the Carp Stars and Legends set Front Runner did last year, it looks like Front Runner got most if not all the biggest OB names - Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto, Isao Shibata, Suguru Egawa and Masumi Kuwata. Front Runner appears to be marketing this as an 80th Anniversary set but I'm still hoping BBM does a larger set before the end of the year. This set will be released sometime in August.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Lots Of New Stuff
BBM put out information about a number of new sets this week:
- As a follow up to last year's All Star Memories 80's set, BBM is releasing an All Star Memories 90's set. As you've probably guessed, this is a pack based set featuring players in All Star games during the 1990's. It's got 90 cards in the base set - 81 "regular" player cards and 9 combination cards ("2 Stars Meet"), a nine card insert set called "Mr All Star Game" and various autograph cards. There's a handful of events from All Star games in the 90's that I can think of that would be fun to see show up in these cards - an extra inning game and an injury causing the Pacific League to have to play Kimiyasu Kudoh in the outfield and have Hideo Nomo bat in one of the 1990 games; Atsuya Furuta hitting for the cycle in 1992 and (of course) Ichiro pitching to Shingo Takatsu in 1996. Looking at the sample cards, I think Furuta's covered but Kudoh is shown pitching for the Hawks - he was with the Lions in 1990. I fear there's probably less than a 50% chance that Ichiro is in the set and probably a 0% chance Nomo is. Too bad. I'm still looking forward to the set which will be released in late July.
- The Giants team set will be out in mid July. Like the other team sets BBM does, this is a pack based set. At 108 cards, the base set is a little bigger than most of the other teams' sets. There are 80 cards for the managers and the players, a single mascot/checklist card, five combinations cards, four future star cards and 18 "Giants Pride cards". There's also a nine card insert set (not sure of the theme) and a bunch of possible autograph and bat cards. There's also some possible metallic cards. I'm not a huge fan of either the Giants or the team sets, but this actually is kind of an attractive looking set.
- Continuing the theme of having a box set containing both OB and active players that BBM has already done this year for the Carp and Lions, BBM has announced a Hawks box set called "Futures And Legends". There are 37 cards in the set - 36 base cards and one special card. There's no information on how the base cards are split between the "Futures" and the "Legends". It looks like the special card could be a facsimile autographed card, a real autographed card or a jersey card (it's says Nankai but I suspect it's a jersey from one of the games the Hawks wore throwback uniforms rather than an original Nankai jersey from the 1980's or earlier). The set will be out in late June.
- BBM is also doing a box set for the Fighters called "We Love Hokkaido". It will have 27 cards in its base set and one special card. There's absolutely no information on what's in the base set but the special cards will be facsimile autographed cards, real autographed cards and die cut cards. There apparently is an autographed card of ski jumper Noriaki Kasai available but I don't know if there will be card of him in the base set. The set will be released in mid-July.
- The second of BBM's sets dedicated to the cheerleaders and dance teams for various teams - Dancing Heroine Mai - will be released on July 28. Like the earlier Hana version, this is a pack based set containing 96 cards in its base set (split unevenly between 10 different teams - the Tigers and Carp are not included in the set). There is a "hologram" parallel of the base cards, some form of insert that is not described and also autographed cards available. I don't know for sure but I think that the checklist for both the Hana and Mai sets are identical but the cards themselves are different.
In addition to the BBM sets, there are a couple new Front Runner Trading Card sets that showed up at Discount Niki's website. As usual, these are team specific box sets - this time for the Lions and the Buffaloes. These particular ones are a new type for Front Runner called "Signature Edition". From what I gather, there are 22 cards in each box set, 20 base cards and two autographed cards. As you might guess with two autograph cards, these sets are expensive - Niki is listing each set at 11,300 yen apiece, which is basically $113. The sets will be out at the end of July.
- As a follow up to last year's All Star Memories 80's set, BBM is releasing an All Star Memories 90's set. As you've probably guessed, this is a pack based set featuring players in All Star games during the 1990's. It's got 90 cards in the base set - 81 "regular" player cards and 9 combination cards ("2 Stars Meet"), a nine card insert set called "Mr All Star Game" and various autograph cards. There's a handful of events from All Star games in the 90's that I can think of that would be fun to see show up in these cards - an extra inning game and an injury causing the Pacific League to have to play Kimiyasu Kudoh in the outfield and have Hideo Nomo bat in one of the 1990 games; Atsuya Furuta hitting for the cycle in 1992 and (of course) Ichiro pitching to Shingo Takatsu in 1996. Looking at the sample cards, I think Furuta's covered but Kudoh is shown pitching for the Hawks - he was with the Lions in 1990. I fear there's probably less than a 50% chance that Ichiro is in the set and probably a 0% chance Nomo is. Too bad. I'm still looking forward to the set which will be released in late July.
- The Giants team set will be out in mid July. Like the other team sets BBM does, this is a pack based set. At 108 cards, the base set is a little bigger than most of the other teams' sets. There are 80 cards for the managers and the players, a single mascot/checklist card, five combinations cards, four future star cards and 18 "Giants Pride cards". There's also a nine card insert set (not sure of the theme) and a bunch of possible autograph and bat cards. There's also some possible metallic cards. I'm not a huge fan of either the Giants or the team sets, but this actually is kind of an attractive looking set.
- Continuing the theme of having a box set containing both OB and active players that BBM has already done this year for the Carp and Lions, BBM has announced a Hawks box set called "Futures And Legends". There are 37 cards in the set - 36 base cards and one special card. There's no information on how the base cards are split between the "Futures" and the "Legends". It looks like the special card could be a facsimile autographed card, a real autographed card or a jersey card (it's says Nankai but I suspect it's a jersey from one of the games the Hawks wore throwback uniforms rather than an original Nankai jersey from the 1980's or earlier). The set will be out in late June.
- BBM is also doing a box set for the Fighters called "We Love Hokkaido". It will have 27 cards in its base set and one special card. There's absolutely no information on what's in the base set but the special cards will be facsimile autographed cards, real autographed cards and die cut cards. There apparently is an autographed card of ski jumper Noriaki Kasai available but I don't know if there will be card of him in the base set. The set will be released in mid-July.
- The second of BBM's sets dedicated to the cheerleaders and dance teams for various teams - Dancing Heroine Mai - will be released on July 28. Like the earlier Hana version, this is a pack based set containing 96 cards in its base set (split unevenly between 10 different teams - the Tigers and Carp are not included in the set). There is a "hologram" parallel of the base cards, some form of insert that is not described and also autographed cards available. I don't know for sure but I think that the checklist for both the Hana and Mai sets are identical but the cards themselves are different.
In addition to the BBM sets, there are a couple new Front Runner Trading Card sets that showed up at Discount Niki's website. As usual, these are team specific box sets - this time for the Lions and the Buffaloes. These particular ones are a new type for Front Runner called "Signature Edition". From what I gather, there are 22 cards in each box set, 20 base cards and two autographed cards. As you might guess with two autograph cards, these sets are expensive - Niki is listing each set at 11,300 yen apiece, which is basically $113. The sets will be out at the end of July.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)