Summer Offerings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Japanese Pitchers In Korea

I wanted to do a quick update on some Japanese pitchers playing in South Korea, three who I hadn't realized were there before and two that just recently signed.

Let's start with the two newcomers - or one newcomer and one returnee.  The Doosan Bears released their Asian quota player - Ichiro Tamura - last week and replaced him with Takuto Takada.  Takada was the sixth round pick of the Baystars in the 2020 draft and played for them through the 2024 season.  He signed on with the Oisix Niigata Albirex Baseball Club, one of the two independent teams in NPB's farm leagues, after being released by DeNA and has been playing for them until Doosan signed him.

2023 BBM Baystars #DB30

The other pitcher is Keisho Shirakawa, who's been playing for the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the independent Shikoku Island league since 2020.  Shirakawa is joining the KIA Tigers who released their Asian quota player, Australian infielder Jarryd Dale, a few weeks back.  Shirakawa had previously briefly played in KBO as an "injury replacement player" in separate stints with two different teams (SSG and Doosan) in 2024.  He missed the 2025 season due to Tommy John surgery.  I do not have any baseball cards for him but I suspect there are cards of him with Tokushima.

The three pitchers I hadn't realized were in Korea are playing for the Ulsen Whales, an independent team playing in the KBO Futures League, the farm league for KBO.  This is the Whales inaugural season and notable players on their roster besides the Japanese pitchers are eight year MLB veteran Ji-man Choi and Alex Hall, one of the catchers on Australia's WBC teams in 2023 and 2026.  

Jui Kobayashi was the Hawks fourth pick in the 2019 draft.  He was an infielder for his first three years with the team but switched to pitching after being released and resigned by the team as a development (ikusei) player. He signed with Niigata after being released by the Hawks for a final time after 2024 and spent 2025 with them.  I don't have any cards of him as a pitcher, only as an infielder:

2020 Epoch NPB #071

Taisei Naga has spent the past four years playing for independent league teams after graduating from Hokkaido University.  He spent 2022 and 2023 with the Bibai Black Diamonds of the Hokkaido Baseball League and 2024 and 2025 with Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the Baseball Challenge League.  I do not know if he has any baseball cards from either of those teams.

Akitake Okada was the first pick of the Carp in the 2015 draft and was a member of their V3 team which finished in first place in three straight years from 2016 to 2018.  He pitched in the Nippon Series in both 2016 against the Fighters and 2018 against the Hawks but his best season was probably 2017 when he went 12-5 and made the All Star team.  He got injured late in the 2018 season and spent almost the entire rest of his time with the Carp on their farm team.  He missed the entire 2022 season recovering from Tommy John surgery and was an ikusei player in 2024, his last year in Hiroshima.  He spent 2025 playing for Meiji Yasuda of the corporate leagues before giving professional baseball another shot with Ulsen.

2019 BBM 1st Version #166

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

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

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

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

- BBM has announced the final three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026.  As usual, each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet (or may have title that doesn't translate to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Inserts	Other
Early July	Buffaloes	69	Reborn(2), Samurai Soul(2), Heirloom Sword(2), Small But Amazing(2), Natural(4)	Go All Together(9), Beyond The Dream That Must Come True(3), Golden Egg(3), Three Pillars(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph cards
Mid July	Marines	68	Rising Young Players(4), Veteran Players(2), Specialists(3), Early Season Highlights(4)	Key Players(9), Promising Players(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late July	Dragons	69	Young Starting Pitchers(3), Infield Key Players(3), Tokai Heroes(6)	Unstoppable(9), No Limit(3), Rise Above(3), Shine Bright(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

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

- Epoch has announced another "Premier Edition" team set.  This one is for the Fighters and will hit the stores on July 18th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 37 for active players and eight for OB players.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" 37), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (8) and "Combo"6).  

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

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

KBO Asian Quota Players

I had heard that the KBO had introduced an "Asian Quota" slot to their team's rosters this season - a player from another Asian country (basically Japan, Taiwan or Australia) that would not count against the team's foreign player quota - but I hadn't really been tracking who all had been signed.  I had made note of the SSG Landers picking up Shota Takeda a few month back but I hadn't looked at who else got signed until NPB Reddit referenced this article about Yuto Kanakubo of the Kiwoom Heroes earlier this week.  Seven of the ten players signed by the KBO teams have played in NPB although only five of those players are Japanese.  I thought I'd do a quick post about these players:

2023 BBM Swallows #S24

As mentioned above, Yuto Kanakubo was the player the Kiwoom Heroes signed.  He was the Swallows's fifth pick in the 2017 draft out of Tokai University Ichihara Boyo High School and spent his entire NPB career with Yakult.  He's apparently the most successful so far of all the "Asian Quota" players as Kiwoom has just promoted him to be their closer.  (UPDATE - a commenter has pointed out that a couple other players who are mentioned below - Lachlan Wells and Wang Yan-Cheng - are doing much better than Kanakubo and Kanakubo's "success" is relative to Kiwoom's underperforming bullpen)

2021 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #13

Masaya Kyoyama joined the Lotte Giants this year after nine years with the Baystars.  He was DeNA's fourth pick in the 2016 draft out of Omi High School.

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-14

Shota Takeda of the SSG Landers had the most notable NPB career of all these players.  He was taken in the first round of the 2011 draft by the Hawks out of Miyazaki Nihon University High School.  He had a couple really good seasons in their starting rotation in the mid-teens and made the All Star team in 2015.  He also won "Outstanding Player" awards in both the 2014 and 2015 Nippon Series and played for Samurai Japan in both the 2015 Premier 12 and the 2017 World Baseball Classic.  Injuries and ineffectiveness combined to reduce his playing time over the past several years though.

2023 BBM Lions #L16

Ichiro Tamura of the Doosan Bears had been with the Saitama Seibu Lions from when they drafted him in the sixth round of the 2016 draft out of Rikkio University until last season.  He got into 150 games over that period, mostly working in middle relief.

2021 Topps NPB #63

Natsuki Toda had an eventful few years before he signed with the NC Dinos last winter.  He had played baseball at Tokai University Sugao High School but dropped out after suffering an elbow injury.  He took classes through a correspondence school and, after graduating, he joined the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the independent Shikoku Island League.  He spent his first season with them as the closer but moved to the starting rotation in 2020 and led the league in wins and strikeouts.  He was named to the Best 9 team and won the league's MVP award.  The Yomiuri Giants took him in the seventh round of the ikusei portion of the 2020 draft.  He pitched well enough in the first few months of 2021 to get signed to the 70 man roster although he only made three appearances with the top team.  After a somewhat disappointing 2022 season in which he posted an ERA of 6.55, the Giants released him and resigned him to an ikusei contract.  The Giants eventually moved him back to the 70 man roster last season but ultimately released him again at the end of the season.  His stints as a development player have really cut down on his baseball card appearances.  As far as I can tell, he only had four cards from any of the major card manufacturers - 2021 BBM Rookie Edition, 2022 & 2025 BBM Giants and 2021 Topps NPB.

2020 Eagles 1st Version #32

Wang Yan-Cheng of the Hanwha Eagles was only the second Taiwanese player to ever play in KBO.  He had spent six seasons with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles as an ikusei player so he never played with the top team.  Like Toda, his time as a development player limited his baseball cards - he only has six, all from the Eagles' team issued sets (including the last couple that were issued with Epoch).

2018/19 Choice ABL #35

Jarryd Dale of the Kia Tigers is the only one of the "Asian Quota" players who is not a pitcher.  He had spent the 2025 season as an ikusei player with the Orix Buffaloes.  Dale is another former WBC player, having played for Australia in both 2023 and 2026.  I do not know of any cards showing him as a Buffalo - they would have to be team issued cards.

Dale is not the only Australian "Asian Quota" player - former Minnesota Twin and Philadelphia Phillies farm hand Lachlan Wells is with the LG Twins.  Wells had previously played with the Kiwoom Heroes last year, prior to the introduction of the "Asian Quota" slot.  Wells has also played in the World Baseball Classic, suiting up for Team Australia in both the 2017 and 2026 tournaments. 

The final two "Asian Quota" players are both from Japan and had played for independent teams.  Yura Miyaji of the Samsung Lions played for the Tokushima Indigo Socks in 2024 and Kufu HAYATE Ventures Shizuoka (one of the independent teams in NPB's farm leagues) in 2025 while Koki Sugimoto of the KT Wiz was with Tokushima from 2023 to 2025.  (And, yes, I think it's odd that three of the ten players listed here are former Indigo Socks.)

2025 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

I'm finishing up my review of 2025's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.

Bushiroad returned this past year with updates to their DreamOrder collectible card game that was initially released in 2024.  They released a booster pack set for each of the 12 NPB teams which were released in pairs throughout the year with the Giants and Tigers sets coming out in March; the Buffaloes, Lions, Carp and Dragons getting released in April; the Hawks, Eagles, Baystars, and Swallows hitting stores in May and the Fighters and Marines getting published in June.  They also released two other sets in September - a Samurai Japan set that appears to be team set for the 2024 Premier 12 team (which furthers my confusion about the Samurai Japan license holder) and a "Heroes Of 2025" set that features some of the top players from each team.

Bandai returned with a second edition of their "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection", their collaboration with Namco that was distributed with packets a snack called "kaki no tane".  Like their 2024 set, this was a 36 card set featuring caricatures of players.

Epoch and the Eagles collaborated on a "comprehensive" team set for the second year in a row.  I was a bit surprised when I realized that there was only one of these sets released in 2025 since the Eagles have done two - labeled "1st Version" and "2nd Version" - almost every year since at least 2018.  As far as I could tell, this was the only collaboration between a team and card company this year - the Lions and BBM did not issue an "L Collection" set for the first time in several years.  I am sure that, once again, various teams issued card sets either through their fan clubs or with meals at the ballpark (or both) but I don't know anything about them.

TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") only did a single one of their "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team sets this year and it was for the Hawks.  They did, however, issue a new product called "mini folding screens".  Each "mini folding screen" is a panel about 24 centimeters (9 1/2 inches) by 13.5 centimeters (around 5 1/3 inches) which is split into three parts.  They issued three sets of eight sheets (four "base set" sheets with four "foil signature" parallels) for three teams - the Giants, Hawks and Dragons.

I think my total count of 2025 NPB sets comes out to about 77 which is a little lower than last year's total of 79 (I had listed the total number of 2024 sets as 60 in my review last year but I was counting all the DreamOrder cards as being one set rather than twenty individual sets).  This would be a count of all the "nationally" released sets (so I'm including the Epoch/Eagles team set but no other team issued sets) but not any of the on-line, on-demand Epoch One or Topps Now cards.

There were three KBO sets released in South Korea in 2025 - all by SCC.  KBO Collection was released in May, KBO Collection+ came out in August and KBO Sensation was released in September.

KBO Catchup and End Of The Year Releases

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Epoch is releasing their second of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets on November 8th (a week after their first one comes out).  Three card boxes of the "Marines Stars & Legends with Memorabilia" set will retail for 16500 (about $112).  The base set has 36 cards - 32 for active players (and manager Masato Yoshii) and just four for OB players (Seiya Inoue, Toshiaki Imae, Masahide Kobayashi and Tomoya Satozaki).  There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  All the memorabilia cards are bat and/or batting glove cards for three 2025 rookies - Misho Nishikawa, Ryusei Miyazaki, and Yu Tatematsu.  There are four varieties of individual bat cards - "core", "grip", "barrel" and "knob" - along with a card featuring a bat fragment for all three players.  There are two varieties of individual batting glove cards - "piece" and "strap" - along with a card featuring a batting glove piece from all three players.  There are also individual cards that feature both a bat and glove relic for each player.  There are also five varieties of autographed cards available.  All 36 players have an "authentic" autograph card while the four OB players also have a "Legendary" autograph card.  I think the remaining autograph cards are all for the active players - "Star" (five cards), "Rookie" (six cards) and "Baseball" (20 cards).  If we assume that there's no overlap between the players in each group, there's an additional autograph for 31 of the 32 active players.  I'd guess that the one guy who doesn't have a second autograph card is Yoshii but I don't know that for sure.

Summertime Things

Summer has arrived and I realized that I'd gone about a month and a half since I last did a roundup of new set announcements.  Time to fix that so here goes...

- Epoch has announced three more of their team sets under the "Premier Edition" label.  The Dragons set will be out on July 19th, the Buffaloes set will be out on August 16th and the Baystars set will be out on August 30th.  This will make it eight teams that Epoch has done these team sets for this year, with only the Giants, Hawks, Marines and Eagles being left out.  The Dragons set has 44 cards in its base set - 40 for active players, one for the mascot Doala and three for members of the coaching staff (I assume they'll feature photos of them from when they were active players and not coaches).  The Buffaloes and Baystars base sets are split between active and OB players with the Buffaloes set having 39 active players and three OB players and the Baystars set having 47 active players and seven OB players.  (I should mention that the "active players" group includes each team's manager as well.)  There's a "holo" parallel for every base set card in all three sets.  Each set has the same batch of inserts as all the rest of the "Premier Edition" sets - 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 believe all of the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (twelve 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 Dragons set has 41 "Authentic Autograph" cards, four "Star Autograph" cards, eight "Rookie Autograph" cards, three "Legendary Autograph" cards, two "Combo Autograph" cards and four "Rookie Combo Autograph" cards along with an autographed card of Doala entitled "Doala's Flip".  The Buffaloes set has 39 "Authentic Autograph" cards, six "Star Autograph" cards, twelve "Rookie Autograph" cards, two "Combo Autograph" cards and an unspecified number of "Legendary Autograph" cards (but presumably three or less, assuming these are all for the OB players in the set).  The Baystars set has 44 "Authentic Autograph" cards, four "Star Autograph" cards, nine "Rookie Autograph" cards, seven "Legendary Autograph" cards and three "Combo Autograph" cards.  

- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on August 30th.  This year's edition will have 40 cards - a 37 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card.  The base set is made up of all of last falls draftees from the six Pacific League teams with the biggest name being Rui Muneyama of the Eagles.  There are three types of autographed cards available of all 37 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.

- BBM is releasing the third installment of their set to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Saitama Seibu Lions.  While the two previous parts were 36 card box sets, boxes for the Lions 75th Anniversary Series Vol.3 set will contain 37 cards - a 36 card base set plus one "special insert card" which could be either a facsimile or authentic autograph.  The base set will include 19 OB players from the 1990's and 2000's and 17 current players (each of the players currently on the Lions' roster will eventually be included in one of the four sets).  The set will be out in late July with the final part arriving in September.

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

- BBM's annual high-end set - Genesis - will be released in early October, a little later than normal.  As usual the base set contains 120 cards - ten per team which splits up as nine player cards and a team checklist.  Also as usual, no one really cares about the base set as the attraction of Genesis is the autograph and memorabilia cards available in the boxes.  The different varieties are too numerous to list but there are booklets, super patches, ball autographs and multiplayer autographed memorabilia cards.  There's also a myriad of parallel versions of all the base cards and five "High-grade insert card" sets - Elite Of Nine, Game Changer, Unrivaled, Cross Ocean and Combo Cross Foil Signing.  

- I realized that I missed writing about the new SCC KBO League Collection Card set which was released back in May.  The base set (the "Normal" cards according to SCC) has kind of a unique twist that I don't think SCC (or anyone else for that matter) has done before.  Each of the 140 active players (14 from each team) featured have two cards in the set - one showing them in their home uniform and one showing them in their away uniform.  In addition to the 280 cards for active players, there's also 11 cards of OB players which brings the size of the base set to 291.  There are also 90 "Puzzle" cards available - nine for each team which form a 3x3 puzzle featuring nine players from the team - and 81 "Hologram" cards - 7 from each team plus one for each of the 11 OB players.  There is a parallel version of the "Hologram" cards as well,  There's also 30 "Clover" cards - three from each team.  These appear to be some sort of partially transparent card.  There are 81 autographed cards available which have a similar breakdown as the "Hologram" cards in that most teams have seven of them and there's one for each of the OB players.  The big difference (other than not every active player who has a "Hologram" card has an autographed one and vice versa) is that for some reason there's eight autographs for Kia but only six for Kiwoom.

The title of this post was inspired by a song I heard Chuck Prophet do live a little over a month ago (even though one of the sets came out in the spring and one of them is scheduled for the fall):

More Cards From Korean Cardboard

I mentioned in the post I had done about some cards I had bought from Dan Skrezyna - aka Korean Cardboard - that Dan had located some more KBO cards from my want list and I'd bought those as well.  The package made excellent time crossing the Pacific - Dan told me he shipped the cards last Monday and they showed up today.

I was pretty excited about all of the cards but I think I was the most excited about what objectively is the dullest card in the batch - the unnumbered "Title Card" for the 1999 Teleca Premium "Korea Dream Team" insert set.  This was the last card I needed to complete this set.  The front of the card has details about the 1999 Asian Championship, a qualifier to the baseball competition for the 2000 Sydney Olympics:

The back of the card has the scores of all the games in the tournament and shows the standings of the final round and the team's overall finishes (Korea won the tournament which is why Teleca did cards for the team):

The rest of the cards were all from the 2000 Teleca set.  Dan sent me eleven base set cards and two "Rookies" insert cards.  The first of these is arguably the biggest card in the set, at least to MLB fans:

2000 Teleca #72

Here's one of the other base set cards and the two "Rookies" insert cards:

2000 Teleca #107

2000 Teleca #R15

2000 Teleca #R17

The remainder of the cards were all members of the SK Wyverns.  I've written about this in the past - I believe that these are all short printed cards that were included in a second printing of the set, replacing the cards of the defunct Ssangbangwool Raiders from the first printing:

2000 Teleca #195

2000 Teleca #197

2000 Teleca #201

2000 Teleca #202

2000 Teleca #207

2000 Teleca #209

2000 Teleca #210

2000 Teleca #214

2000 Teleca #215

With the exception of Son Cha-hoon, all of these players also appear in the set with Ssangbangwool.

The KBO portion of my want list is now down to just 14 cards - one from the 1999 Teleca set, two from the 2000 Teleca base set, five from the 2000 Teleca "Rookies" insert set and six from the 2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set.  Thanks, Dan!

Cards From Korean Cardboard

Dan Skrezyna - aka Korean Cardboard - is selling his card collection.  He contacted me a few weeks ago about some cards on my KBO want list and we made a deal for nine cards.  He shipped them off and they showed up at my house today.

There are four KBO sets that I'm trying to complete - the 1999 Teleca base set, the 1999 Teleca Premium "Korea Dream Team" insert set, the 2000 Teleca base set and the 2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set.  The cards from Dan included two of the three "Korea Dream Team" cards I needed and just over half of the "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" cards.

I'll show off the "Korea Dream Team" cards first.  This insert set commemorated the Korean National Team that won the 1999 Asian Championship which was a qualifier for the 2000 Sydney Olympic baseball competition.  As far as I know, this was the first time the Korean National Baseball team was on Korean baseball cards and it didn't happen again until 2021.

1999 Teleca Premium "Korea Dream Team" #D-22

1999 Teleca Premium "Korea Dream Team" #D-15

Once upon a time, NPB and KBO made an agreement that they'd play a post-season All Star series every four years.  They only ended up doing it three times - 1991, 1995 and 1999.  The 1999 games were commemorated in the "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set from the 2000 Teleca set.  There are 46 cards in this subset and I'm down to only needed six more of them - four of which feature Lee Seung-yeop.  Here are the seven cards I got from Dan:

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ03

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ13

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ14

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ25

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ31

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ34

2000 Teleca '99 Korean Japan Super Games #KJ39

I'm curious who the pitchers on the cards of Park and Lee are.  They both appear to be from the Baystars.  According to the Japanese Wikipedia page about the series, there were four Yokohama pitchers who appeared in the games - Daisuke Miura, Kazuo Fukumori, Yukiya Yokoyama and Takeo Kawamura.  All of them are right handed like the players on the cards so that doesn't narrow it down at all.  

The pitcher on Park's card is wearing an away uniform and Fukumori and Yokoyama were the only two who appeared in games where Japan was the visiting team.   The game Fukumori appeared in was in Gifu while Yokoyama's was at Tokyo Dome.  I think that looks like the Dome in the photo so I'm inclined to guess that it's Yokoyama.  It certainly looks like him:

1999 BBM #48

The pitcher on Lee's card is wearing the home uniform and you can probably guess that Miura and Kawamura pitched in games that Japan was the home team in.  Both of those games were inside - Miura was in Fukuoka and Kawamura was in Nagoya - and there's absolutely nothing in the photo that would distinguish one Dome from the other.  If I had to guess, I'd say it's Kawamura but only because I think it looks like him:

1999 BBM #42

Dan discovered that he had some more KBO cards from my want list and those are now on their way to me as well.  So there'll be another post like this in the next few weeks.

Thanks for selling me these cards, Dan!

UPDATE - I forgot to mention that I think that's Hideki Matsui playing center field in the background on Park's card

2024 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

I'm finishing up the review of 2024's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.

The big addition this year was a collectible card game called DreamOrder from the Japanese game company Bushiroad.  They released a somewhat bewildering number of cards in what should probably be considered twenty unique sets.  In April, they released starter decks for each team that contained 12 unique player cards in each deck.   Additionally, they released the Central League and Pacific League Vol. 1 booster packs sets as pack based sets at the same time.  Each of the two sets had 12 additional player cards per team plus six "tactics" cards per team that show a photo of a player from the team (although they don't identify them).  Bushiroad added two Vol. 2 booster pack sets at the end of June, two Vol. 3 sets at the end of August and two Vol. 4 booster pack sets in mid-October.  I think but I'm not entirely sure that the Vol. 2-4 sets were put together the same way Vol. 1 was.  If so, that would imply that between the starter deck and the four booster packs, each team had 60 player cards plus 24 "tactics" cards for 84 total cards per team or 1008 cards altogether.  That's not taking into account the parallels, of course.  DreamOrder was the first collectible card game for NPB since Konami stopped doing the Baseball Collection cards in 2022.

Bandai did some baseball cards for the first time since 2015 or so.  It was not a return of Owners League, their collectible card game, however.  Instead, they teamed up with Namco to release a 36 card set of caricatures of players.  he cards were given away with bags of what's basically a bar snack called "kaki no tane" which in this case are primarily soy crackers.  The set was called "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection 2024". 

TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") did three of their "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team sets this year although I think only two of them - the Hawks and Swallows - were available through the normal outlets.  The third time was the Lions but the cards may have only been available through the team itself - I got two packs at the team store outside Seibu Dome in May.

Also available at the Lions store were packs of their "L Collection, Vol. 1" set, a collaboration they've done with BBM for at least the last three years.  I'm still not clear about why the sets are labeled "Vol. 1" as I've never seen any other volumes.  In past years, Jambalaya has listed these cards but for some reason, they didn't this year (although you can see what I pulled from the packs I bought here).

The Lions weren't the only team to pair up with one of the big card companies for a "team issued" set.  The Eagles worked with Epoch on their two annual sets called "1st Version" and "2nd Version".  I know that were team-issued or fan club related sets for the Marines and Hawks as well as at least one other one for the Lions and I assume that most of the other teams also had one or more sets each.

My count for the total number of NPB sets this year is 60 which is probably a little low.  I'm only counting the DreamOrder stuff as one set and I'm not counting the team sets from the Lions, Marines and Hawks as they weren't "national" as opposed to the Eagles Epoch set and the Lions BBM set.  I'm also not counting any of the on demand sets from Epoch or Topps.  That total is the same as last year, kind of confirming that this year's releases were pretty similar to last year's.

Current and future NPB players appeared on some cards from Panini in North America as well.  For the second year in a row, Tomoyuki Sugano appeared on a couple of their releases - at least the Donruss and Crusade base sets (along with a bazillion parallels of each card, of course).  Also for the first time since 2020, Panini included autograph/memorabilia cards of the members of the 2023 Samurai Japan collegiate team in their USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  The 24 players include 15 2023 NPB draft picks (including Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Natsuki Takeuchi) along with four 2024 NPB draft picks.  Panini also released non-autographed memorabilia cards for the team with the box set version of the Stars & Stripes set.

Over in South Korea, SCC released three sets for the KBO.  The "KBO League" set came out in mid-June, followed by the "KBO Rainbow" set in late-July.  The final set, "KBO Karbon", was published at the end of October.