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.

2025 In Review - Epoch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2025 In Review - Topps

It was pretty much business as usual for Topps with their NPB products in 2025.  For the third straight year, they issued four sets but they managed to spread them out a little more during the year rather than bunch almost all of them at the end of the year like they did in 2024.

They issued their flagship "NPB" set in June.  Their next set. "Stadium Club NPB", was published in September.  "NPB Chrome" followed in October and "Finest NPB" came out in November.  All four sets had base sets of 216 cards although I don't believe that the same players appeared in all four sets.

This is the fifth year that Topps has done cards for the NPB market and they've done different sets each year.  They've issued a total of 17 sets over that time - two in 2021, three in 2022, and four each in 2023, 2024 and 2025.  They've done the "flagship" "NPB" set each year as well as the "NPB Chrome" set.  The "Chrome" set has changed somewhat over the years as the first two years it was simply an ugly parallel version of the "NPB" set but since 2023 has been a completely different set with different photos and checklist.  Three other sets have only had two editions - "Bowman NPB" (2022-23), "206 NPB" (2023-24) and "Stadium Club NPB" (2024-25).  "Finest NPB" so far has only had the 2025 edition.  

For the second year, Topps issued Topps Now cards for NPB teams.  I have been unable to determine, however, how many of the teams they did the cards for or even how many cards they issued this year.  Topps' Japanese website - on the rare occasions where it doesn't automatically redirect me to the US one - doesn't appear to have any archive information about what cards they've issued easily available.

Topps apparently lost the license to do Samurai Japan cards at the beginning of the year as both Epoch and Bushiroad did Samurai Japan related sets but they apparently regained the license towards the end of the year.  They issued six Topps Now cards for the team that played a couple friendly matches against Korea in November.

2025 In Review - Calbee

Calbee's 2025 output was unfortunately much the same as their 2023 and 2024 output.  Once again, Calbee issued their "flagship" set in only two Series rather than the three that they had done for much of the previous twenty years.  

Series One came out in May - two months later than Calbee has published it in previous years.  My guess is that they decided if they were only publishing two Series instead of three, they could schedule them evenly throughout the baseball season rather than starting just before the season started.  The base set contained a total of 87 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 21 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  There were three associated insert sets.  Two of these were ones that had been included in previous years - "Star" and "Legend" (for players who retired at the end of the previous season) but the third was a 12 card set called "Strikeout Leader".  In the past, Calbee had special 12 card box sets that were only available from their Japanese Amazon store but it appears that they have shifted these to being available in packs now.

Series Two was released in August and contained a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards, 12 "Opening Game Cleanup Hitter" cards and six checklist cards.  There were two insert sets - "Star" and "Opening Day Pitcher" with the latter again being cards that would have previously only been available in the Amazon.co.jp Calbee shop box sets.

Calbee bookended these releases with a pair of sets that were a tie-in with the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" mobile game.  The first of these sets was released in January and I'm pretty sure Calbee had originally intended to issue the set in 2024 as the set had 47 cards - one less than would be expected.  The missing player appears to have been Roki Sasaki who they would have been able to include in a 2024 set but not a set released in 2025.  The second set, containing only 24 cards, was released in December.  It's a little confusing, as both sets have the same name - "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" - and look very similar.

2025 In Review - BBM

BBM increased their number of baseball (or primarily baseball) sets from 27 in each of the past two years to 32 in 2025.  It was the highest number of BBM sets since 2019 (which also had 32 sets).

Actually, I should correct this - BBM announced 32 sets this year but one of them - the set celebrating both BBM's 35th year doing baseball cards and Shukan Baseball's 4000th issue - has been delayed until January.  So really, BBM only issued 31 sets in 2025

Over two thirds of BBM's 2025 releases - 24 of the 31 sets - were what I refer to as the "perennials" - sets they issue every year.  These sets include the three "flagship" sets - "1st Version", "2nd Version" and "Fusion"; the team sets for all 12 NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers; the "Rookie Edition" (draft pick) set; the "Dancing Heroine" set dedicated to the cheerleader/dance squads for a number of the teams; the high-end "Genesis" set and the ultra-high-end "Glory" set.  They also include the two baseball specific box sets - "Icons" (with a theme of "Prospects" this year) and "Rookie Edition Premium".  They also issued three multi-sport sets that primarily featured baseball players - the "Farewell" box set for retiring baseball players and other athletes, the "Infinity" set and the ultra high-end "Crown" set.  

Half of the "non-perennial" sets were for the Lions.  The team was celebrating it's 75th anniversary this year and BBM issued a 142 card Anniversary set for the team in four 35 or 36 card box sets throughout the year.  Vol. 1 came out in April, Vol. 2 came out in June, Vol. 3 came out in July and Vol. 4 finished things off in September.  

The other three "non-perennial" sets were all box sets.  I've been unsure if the box set for the women's high school baseball All Star game against Ichiro's KOBE CHIBEN team (that somehow included Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka) should be called "Dream" or the "High School Baseball Women's Selection VS Ichiro Selection" but it came out last February.  The other two sets were team related - "Lions Bouquet" and "Fighters Great Voyage" - and came out towards the end of the year. 

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.  

2024 In Review - Topps

2024 was Topps' fourth year of doing NPB cards and they ended up publishing four sets.  Eventually.  

Topps had been steadily adding a set a year for their first three years.  They published "NPB" and "NPB Chrome" in 2021, added "NPB Bowman" in 2022 and added "NPB 206" in 2023.  This year, however, they replaced "NPB Bowman" with the "NPB Stadium Club" set.

The timing of their sets remains very odd.  They released their "flagship" "NPB" set in May but the other three sets - "NPB Chrome", "NPB Stadium Club" and "NPB 206" - were not released until mid-December.  Like last year, the Chrome set was not just an ugly parallel version of the flagship set - it had a different checklist and different photos.

Topps really expanded their on-line, on-demand cards this past year.  Like they've done in both of the previous years, they issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan teams, both the one that played a couple friendlies against a European All Star team in March and the one that played in the Premier 12 in November.  There were eight singles and a 30 card team set available for the March team and 22 singles for the Premier 12 team.  I expect that there will be a 30 card team set available for the Premier 12 squad in early January.  I think there may have also been six singles available for the warm up games against Australia prior to the Premier 12 but, if so, they weren't available for anywhere near the length of time that the others were (which was roughly a month).

Topps also added Topps Now cards for NPB to their line up.  Unlike their MLB counterparts which are only on sale for one day, these are on sale for a week.  They were initially 1,243 yen each (a little less than $8) but the price went up to 1,342 ($8.50-ish) after the first 13 cards.  Bizarrely, it appears that Topps is charging 550 yen for shipping these inside Japan (and will not ship these overseas at all).  They issued 207 of these cards in all and only eight of the twelve NPB teams were represented - the Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers.  I am somewhat bewildered at Topps' attempt to challenge Epoch at these sorts of cards when the Epoch One cards cost less than what Topps is charging for shipping but I've been struggling for four years to understand the appeal of most of Topps' NPB output to people and failing so maybe there's just something I'm missing.

Topps also issued an on demand 17 card team set celebrating the Hanshin Tigers Nippon Series Championship in 2023.  The set was on sale for 8800 yen (about $56) for less than a week and, like the NPB Topps Now cards, it was not possible to buy it from overseas. 

2024 In Review - Calbee

Like BBM and Epoch, Calbee pretty much did the same thing in 2024 that they did in 2023.  Unfortunately.

Starting in 2004, Calbee had released three Series each year.  Series One would come out in March, Series Two would come out in June and Series Three would come out in September.  It was probably a coincidence but the releases were in sync with the change of seasons (as Sean pointed out once).  This remained their standard operating procedure for nearly twenty years with the only exception being 2017 when a typhoon the previous year disrupted the potato crop in Hokkaido and limited Calbee to only doing two Series (since the important thing in their eyes were the potato chips and not the cards).  In 2023, however, they unexpectedly only did two Series.  I'm not entirely sure why they ended up not doing the standard three - they basically told me they needed to delay Series Two that year because Series One was so popular - but there was an obvious clue that they had intended to do three Series that year - the checklist cards.  Since 2004, Calbee has included 12 checklist cards - one featuring each NPB team - in their set every year - four in each Series (usually) - with the exception of 2017 and 2023.  Since Calbee had planned on doing all three Series both of those years, there were only eight checklist cards altogether with both of the published Series having four checklist cards each.

The bad news for 2024 was that Calbee again only did two Series.  The worse news is that it was planned this way as there were still 12 checklist cards.  Each Series had six checklist cards so we were back to all 12 teams showing up on one of them.

The "only doing two Series" thing wouldn't be so bad except each Series had fewer cards in it this year than two years ago.  Calbee had standardized the number of "regular" cards in each Series at 72 in 2016 (six cards per team) but lowered it to 60 (five per team) last year and kept it there this year.  The total number of base cards in Series One was 84 with the 60 "regular" player cards, the six checklists and an 18 card "Title Holder" subset.  Series Two had 78 base cards with a 12 card "Player Chairman" subset to go along with the 60 "regular" card and six checklists.  The 2024 Calbee base set then contained a total of 162 cards - 120 "regular" cards, 30 subset cards and twelve checklist cards.

Calbee also had their standard two insert sets with their base set cards.  The "Legend" inserts from Series One typically have several players who retired the previous year but, this year, it only had a single player - Nobuhiro Matsuda.  As usual, there were 24 "Star" insert cards in each Series for a total of 48 overall.  In addition, there were two limited edition 12 card box sets - one for each Series - that could only be purchased through Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The sets were "Home Run Leaders" for Series One and "Opening Day Pitchers" for Series Two.

It was almost comical that with all the other issues with Calbee this past year - fewer Series and fewer cards altogether - that they also had a couple fairly major errors in Series One.  First of all, they listed Hiromi Itoh's height on the back of his card as 176 meters rather than 176 centimeters.  The second issue was that some of the "Star" and "Legend" inserts did not have the "kira" finish that the cards normally have.  The last issue wasn't with the cards themselves but the packaging - they misspelled the word "Lucky" in katakana in their explanation of how to redeem the "Lucky" cards in Series One.  They corrected the Itoh card and the bag so there are two different versions of both out there.  I don't believe either version of the Itoh card is particularly rare but that hasn't stopped folks from trying to get big money for them (although I have not actually seen the corrected card so I could be wrong).  Calbee avoided a repeat of the misspelled "Lucky" on the package for Series Two by not bothering to have a "Lucky" card promotion with it.

I'm spending a lot of time beating up on Calbee in this post so I'll try to end on the one pleasant surprise from them this year.  All of a sudden back at the end of last January, reports started coming out of Kyushu of bags of Calbee chips with baseball cards for the Hawks appearing in stores.  There was eventually an announcement that Calbee was doing a 36 card Hawks team set.  The set was apparently meant to be a 2023 issue as the front design looked like the regular 2023 Calbee cards and the set was supposed to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the opening of Fukuoka Dome which was in 1993.  It was a regional issue with the cards only being available in Western Japan.  I've picked up all the cards off of auction sites in Japan (well, I mean that Ryan has picked them up for me) but I was unable to find any in the card shops I went to last May.

2024 In Review - Epoch

Epoch's 2024 output was kind of like BBM's - a little on the mundane side with no real surprises.  They only put out 19 sets which was two fewer than 2023.  One of those 19, however, was a set with a 2023 "cover date".  The 2023 "OB Club Holographica" set was not published until February of this past year (and I suspect that the 2024 edition will be similarly delayed since it hasn't been announced yet and there's only a couple days left in the year).

Epoch's flagship "NPB" set was back for the seventh consecutive year but was reduced in size from 444 cards to 348.  For the third year in a row, Epoch released an "NPB Luxury" set that used a similar design but with a smaller checklist and different photos.  Each base card was serially numbered and limited to 86.

Epoch also released their "Pacific League Rookies" box set for the seventh consecutive year.

The number of their "reasonably priced" team sets called "Premier Edition" dropped from ten in 2023 back to eight this past year (like it was in 2022).  Each set had between 38 and 45 cards and some of the cards were for OB players in addition to the active players.  The teams Epoch did sets for were the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Lions, Swallows and Tigers.  They dropped the Eagles although they collaborated with Rakuten on the Eagles' annual team produced set.  The Hawks were the other team that they did in 2023 but dropped this past year, joining the Marines and Giants.

Oddly enough, though, those three teams - the Marines, Giants and Hawks - were three of the four teams that Epoch did their ultra high-end active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets for (with the Tigers being the fourth team). 

The remaining sets from Epoch in 2024 were more of their ultra high-end sets, two of which - "Pacific League Premier Edition" and "OB Club Career Achievement" - are pretty much annual issues.  The remaining one was an OB set for Kintetsu called "Memories Of The Kintetsu Buffaloes".

Epoch's on-line, on-demand Epoch One cards were back again for their eighth season.  There were ultimately 1238 cards done in 2024 for ten of the twelve NPB teams - everyone except the Carp and Buffaloes.  The big change Epoch did with the cards this year involved draft picks.  In previous years, Epoch would do Epoch One cards for a couple team's draft picks in the same year that the draft occurred.  For example, in 2018, they issued six cards for the Dragons' 2018 draft picks.  It was kind of neat as these cards then ended up predating BBM's Rookie Edition cards as the earliest cards for the players.  But after doing draft pick cards for six teams in the 2022 edition, they did none in the 2023 set.  For the 2024 cards, they did cards for the 2023 draft picks for all ten teams they did cards for.  I found this to be a lot less interesting than when they did them the same year so I didn't end up getting any of them.

2024 In Review - BBM

2024 was kind of a mundane year with very little difference with what they did in 2023.  Like 2023, they issued 27 baseball (or primarily baseball) sets this year.

The bulk of BBM's 2024 releases - 24 of the 27 sets - were what I refer to as the "perennials" - sets they issue every year although there was a major change in those sets which I'll get to in a minute.  These sets include the three "flagship" sets - "1st Version", "2nd Version" and "Fusion"; the team sets for all 12 NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers; the "Rookie Edition" (draft pick) set; the high-end "Genesis" set and the ultra-high-end "Glory" set.  They also include the two baseball specific box sets - "Icons" (with a theme of "Generations" this year) and "Rookie Edition Premium".  They also issued three multi-sport sets that primarily featured baseball players - the "Farewell" box set for retiring baseball players and other athletes, the "Infinity" set and the ultra high-end "Crown" set.  The big change this year was instead of issuing their "Dancing Heroine" set for the team's cheerleaders and dance teams as two separate sets (called "Hana" and "Mai"), BBM instead issued it as a single set.  I don't generally pay a lot of attention to this set but it looks like the new set was roughly the size of the two previous sets combined.

The three non-perennial sets all came out late in the year.  The "Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary" set was released in late October.  BBM released two single team box sets in late November - "Hawks - Fly Again" which commemorated the Hawks winning the Pacific League pennant for the first time in four years and "Lions Collection" which commemorated an alternate uniform that the Lions did in collaboration with the Japanese clothing designer "New Yorker".

I was a little surprised that BBM did not issue any of their "Team History" sets although, at this point, there's only three teams they didn't do between 2020 and 2023 - the Eagles, Baystars and Fighters.  The Eagles would have made the most sense since they were celebrating their 20th season this past year.  Instead of a full set, however, BBM expanded the Eagles "comprehensive" team set to include what was basically a 36 card 20th Anniversary subset.

2023 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

Time to finish up the reviews of the 2023 releases by covering everything that wasn't done by BBM, Calbee, Epoch or Topps...

After all these years, I still don't know for sure what to call this one outfilt but I'm going to go with "TIC" as opposed to "Hits" or "Produce 216".  They did only two card sets this year - a "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set for the Hawks and a set of traditionally size cards called "Swallows Used Ball".

I'm sure there were any number of team issued sets last year but as usual I only know about less than a handful of them.  The Eagles released their usual two team sets - "1st Version" and "2nd Version" - and the Lions again did something called "L Collection Vol. 1" in collaboration with BBM (and once again there doesn't seem to have been a Vol. 2).  One new item for the year was a set that I assume was issued for the Fighters called something like "Fighters Girl 37Card" which featured the team's cheerleaders/dance squad.

Again, I know that teams did their own sets this year but I don't know the details of any of them.  What I will tell you is that the Baystars did several sets that included a foreign player who for some reason was not included in any sets from BBM, Calbee, Epoch or Topps.  There are at least ten Baystars issued cards of this player.

As far as I can tell, Konami did not do their collectible card game set called "Baseball Collection" this year.  I believe this would be the first year since 2017 they didn't do it - I know they did it every year between 2018 and 2022.

If my count is right, there were a total of 60 NPB sets issued in 2023 (counting sets with 2022 "cover dates" that weren't published until 2023) which is five less than 2022.

NPB players appeared in US released sets as well in 2023.  Besides the multitude of WBC sets from Topps featuring members of Samurai Japan (and not just Shohei Ohtani), Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants appeared on two cards in Panini's Prizm set over the summer.

There were five somewhat major KBO sets released in 2023.  Three of these were from SCC - a second (following the one in 2022) "KBO Legend" set featuring retired players and two sets with active players - "Rainbow Draft" and "Karbon".  In addition, an outfit called "Via" did a set called "Jamsil Rivalry" that featured retired players from the OB/Doosan Bears and LG Twins - the two teams that share Jamil Stadium in Seoul.  Lastly, Hobby Korea issued a box set called "2023 EPIC Series Baseball Legend Baek In-Cheon" which featured five facsimile autographed cards and one real autographed card of NPB and KBO legend Baek In-Cheon (who played in Japan under the name "Jinten Haku").  While I have this listed as a KBO set, I could have easily listed it as an NPB set instead since four of the five cards portray Baek in NPB uniforms (two cards with the Taiheiyo Club Lions and one each with the Toei Flyers and Lotte Orions) and only one in a KBO uniform (MBC Chungryong).

2023 In Review - Topps

Topps was back for their third year of doing NPB cards in 2023 and, like in 2022, ended up doing four sets.  Unlike 2022 though, all four sets were 2023 issues and not sets delayed from the previous year.  I think it's kind of interesting that Topps has added a new set each year they've been doing NPB cards.  They had two sets in 2021 - "NPB" and "Chrome NPB" (although that got delayed until early 2022) - then three sets in 2022 - "NPB", "Chrome NPB" and "Bowman NPB".  This year's offerings were "NPB", "Bowman NPB", "Chrome NPB" and "206 NPB".   The big change this year compared to the previous two is that the "Chrome NPB" was not just an ugly parallel of the "NPB" set - they used different photos and had different checklists with different players.

The timing of Topps' releases was a little strange.  The 216 card "flagship" "NPB" set was released in May but the other three sets didn't come out until the last two months of the year.  The 180 card "Bowman NPB" set came out in early November and the "Chrome NPB" set came out a couple weeks later.  The 216 card "206 NPB" set was released at the beginning of December and I think had to be ordered from Topps' Japanese website.

I mock Topps' NPB offerings a lot and with good reason but I should point out that I really like their Topps Now Samurai Japan cards (although they are pricey).  This year they did 16 Topps Now cards for players (and manager Hirokazu Ibata) on the Samurai Japan squad that won the Asian Professional Baseball Champsionship in November and are also releasing an on-demand Topps Now 30 card full team set for the team (although they're still in the process of selling that so it won't be out for a few more weeks).

2023 In Review - Calbee

2023 was pretty much a run-of-the-mill year for BBM and Epoch but it was anything but for Calbee.  There were three factors that contributed to an extremely disappointing year for Calbee collectors, although only two of them really effected overseas ones.

The first factor became obvious once the checklist for Series One went live early in the year.  Calbee had shrunk the number of "regular" player cards in the Series from the 72 it had been since 2016 to only 60 - so instead of there being six players per team there were only five.  Series Two also contained only 60 "regular" player cards when it was finally released in late August.  Which leads us to the second factor.,,

Calbee only released two Series this year instead of the three that had pretty much been the standard for every year since 2004.  The only exception to that streak was 2017 when the previous year's potato crop had been disrupted by a typhoon and there weren't enough potatoes to make chips with.  That year Calbee only released two Series although they also released a Samurai Japan set late in the year.  There doesn't appear to have been a natural disaster related reason for Calbee only doing two Series in 2023.  The explanation I got from Calbee was pretty much they were delaying Series Two because Series One was so popular.  And then I guess it didn't make sense to issue a Series Three in November.

The third factor was only really a problem for folks living in Japan but it was a major one - the cards were apparently only available in limited release for the first several weeks after their publication.  Series One was released in late March but Sean really didn't start to see the bags of chips in stores until early May.  A similar thing happened when Series Two was released in August (two months later then normal) - it wasn't until October that the cards were available widely.  Series Two also did not include a "Lucky Card" premium, a staple of Calbee's releases for the last 30 years or so.

I've no idea if these factors will be repeated in 2024 although I fully expect that the number of "regular" player cards will remain at 60.  Sean has reported that Japan winning the WBC supposedly played a factor in Calbee's issues with the cards but I would point out that it didn't seem to effect BBM and Epoch.

As for the cards themselves...in addition to the 60 "regular" player cards, Series One contained an 18 card "Title Holder" subset and four checklist cards.  Series Two had a 12 card "First Win" subset and the four checklist cards to go along with the "regular" player cards.  The 2023 Calbee base set then contained a total of 158 cards - 120 "regular" cards, 30 subset cards and eight checklist cards.  There were also two insert sets - 48 "Star" cards distributed across both Series (cards S-01 to S-24 in Series One and S-25 to S-48 in Series Two) and eight "Legend" cards featuring players who retired at the end of 2022 (included in Series One). Additionally there was a limited edition 12 card box set associated with each Series that could only be purchased through Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The sets were "Strikeout Leaders" for Series One and "Speed Star" for Series Two.

2023 In Review - Epoch

Epoch had a kind of similar 2023 as BBM - basically an average year with no real unexpected or unusual offerings.  Epoch put out 21 sets - one more than in 2022 - but that number's a little misleading as three of their sets issued in 2023 had 2022 "cover dates".

Let's cover the late 2022 sets first.  In February they issued their second set for the Japan Retired Foreign Players Association and then in March they issued two ultra high-end sets in association with the OB Club - "Career Achievement" and "Holographica".  This answered my concern from last year that Epoch and the OB Club weren't working together anymore after having done at least one set every year since 2009.

Epoch upped the number of "Premier Edition" sets from eight to ten last year.  These are "reasonably priced" team sets although they are not "comprehensive" like BBM's team sets are.  Each set had between 30 and 45 cards and some of the cards were for OB players in addition to the active players.  The teams Epoch did sets for were the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers or everyone but the Giants and Marines.  On the more expensive team set side, Epoch issued only three of their ultra high-end active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets and oddly enough two of them were for teams they didn't do "Premier Edition" sets for.  The Giants and Marines were joined by the Tigers but this was half the number of "Stars & Legends" sets Epoch did in 2022.

Epoch released their flagship "NPB" set and the "Pacific League Rookies" box set for the sixth consecutive year.  For the second straight year they issued the "NPB Luxury Collection" as a higher end version of a subset of the "NPB" set although this year it wasn't a simple parallel version.

Epoch's other two 2023 sets were both in the ultra high-end category - the "Pacific League Premier Edition" and the 2023 version of "Career Achievement" - the latter being done once again with the OB Club.  The 2023 edition of "Holographica" has again been delayed and won't be released until March.

Epoch continued to produce their on demand Epoch One cards last year and I mean that in more than one way.  They actually continued to produce the 2022 cards into mid-February of 2023, ultimately adding almost 30 more cards to the 2022 set in calendar year 2023 for a total of 1033 cards in the set.  The 2023 edition has 1017 cards so far.  It remains to be seen if they'll continued to do 2023 cards into 2024 although I fully expect them to as they haven't done any cards for the 2023 draft picks yet.  Cards were issued for all the teams except the Carp and the Buffaloes with the Baystars being the new addition for 2023 (although to be fully accurate Epoch did Epoch One cards for DeNA in 2020 and some of the 2022 cards issued in 2023 were also for the team).

2023 In Review - BBM

2023 was a kind of unremarkable year for BBM which in a way made it kind of remarkable.  BBM issued only 27 sets which is the fewest they've done since they only did 26 in 2006 (and almost half of the 50(!) they did ten years ago in 2013).  As far as I can tell, all the cards they issued that had a "cover date" of 2023 were actually released in 2023 which is a first at least for as long as I've been paying attention (and obviously I mean for any given year, not just 2023).

Almost all of BBM's releases in 2023 were what I refer to as their "perennials" - sets they issue every year.  There are now 25 of these - the three "flagship" sets - "1st Version", "2nd Version" and "Fusion"; the team sets for all 12 NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers; the "Rookie Edition" (draft pick) set; the high-end "Genesis" set; the ultra-high-end "Glory" set and the two "Dancing Heroine" Cheerleader sets ("Hana" and "Mai").  They also issued two baseball specific box sets - "Icons" (with a theme of "Samurai" this year) and "Rookie Edition Premium".  They also issued three multi-sport sets that primarily featured baseball players - the "Farewell" box set for retiring baseball players and other athletes, the "Infinity" set and the ultra high-end "Crown" set.  The big changes for the year was that "Glory" went from being issued in December of the previous year to November of the current year.  This is only the second year that "Crown" has been produced.

The two non-perennial sets were the "Munetaka Murakami Shinka" box set that was dedicated to all 56 of Murakami's home runs from 2022 (plus a card for him winning the Triple Crown) and the latest installment of BBM's "Team History" sets - "Lions History 1950-2023".

I have to say I was a little surprised that BBM did not do some sort of box set celebrating the Tigers winning their first Nippon Series in 38 years.  I was also a bit surprised they only did one "Team History" set as they had done at least two in each of the previous three years.  At this point, however, there's only three teams left that they haven't done one of these sets for - the Fighters, the Eagles and the Baystars - and there's a possible reason for each of them to NOT have a set doen.  The Fighters have really only ever had one OB team set from BBM and that was celebrating the 10th Anniversary of them moving to Hokkaido, the Eagles have only been around for 20 years and the Baystars just had an OB team set done in 2019 for their 70th Anniversary.  That said, it wouldn't stun me for BBM to issue a "Team History" set in 2024 for either or both of the Eagles (celebrating their 20th season) or the Baystars (celebrating their 75th).

2022 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

Time to finish up the reviews of the 2022 releases by covering everything that wasn't done by BBM, Calbee or Epoch...

Topps was back for the second year of producing NPB sets and had four releases in all - although one of those was the Chrome version of their 2021 set which didn't get published until January of this year.  They published a 216 card "flagship" set in September and then a Chrome version of it in November.  They also published a 180 card Bowman set in December.  Additionally Topps has apparently acquired the rights to produce Samurai Japan cards and did 16 Topps Now cards for 15 members of the team that played two friendly matches against Team Australia in November along with a full 30 card Topps Now team set (which has not actually been published yet as it will be on sale for another week or so).

I still don't know what to call these guys but the folks at Hits or TIC or Produce 216 Co., Ltd. put out four sets last year.  Two of them were "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" sets - a team set for the Hawks and an OB Carp set done in conjunction with the Japan Retired Foreign Players Association (JRFPA).  The other two sets were "Used Ball" sets (with traditionally sized cards) for the Swallows and Baystars.

The Eagles once again had a pack-based team set that was issued in two parts - a 1st Version and a 2nd Version.  I assume there were more but the only other team issued cards that I'm aware of was the "L Collection Vol 1" cards done by the Lions and BBM (and I don't know if there was ever a "Vol 2").

Konami once again did a Baseball Collection set featuring collectible game cards.  I'm not entirely sure but I think there were 840 cards in the set - 70 cards per team.

The total number of Japanese sets comes out to around 65 (including the two 2021 sets that were published in 2022) which is slightly less than the 68 sets in 2021.

Over in Korea, SCC published three sets for the KBO.  Legend was the first Korean set that I'm aware of for retired players while the Rainbow and Golden Premium sets featured active players.

2022 In Review - Epoch

2022 was a year of change for Epoch.  They issued 20 sets - although one of those technically a delayed 2021 set - which was five fewer than each of the previous two years.  There were some changes in the product line that I'll get as I talk about their sets.

That delayed 2021 set was the Holografica set, an ultra-high-end set (boxes of six cards had an MSRP of 15,000 yen) done in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) - aka the OB Club.  It would be the only set Epoch did with the OB Club last year which is unusual.  Epoch and the OB Club have collaborated on at least one set every year since 2009 - in fact Epoch didn't do sets WITHOUT the OB Club for four or five years after they started doing baseball cards regularly in 2009.  It's kind of a big deal and I wish I knew more about why the two outfits parted ways.

Epoch had been doing "reasonably priced" team sets since 2018 under the label "Rookies & Stars".  They never did all 12 teams and the sets were only "comprehensive" (by which I mean contained the team's entire 70 man roster) in 2018 and 2019.  They did away with the "Rookies & Stars" label this year and instead issued these team sets under the label "Premier Edition".  The base sets for these team sets were anywhere from 29 to 45 cards and often included a couple of OB players along with the active players.  Epoch did these sets for eight of the twelve teams - the Carp, Tigers, Dragons, Lions, Buffaloes, Baystars, Fighters and Swallows (or all the teams they did "Rookies & Stars" sets for in 2021 except the Hawks).

For the fifth consecutive year Epoch issued their flagship 432 card NPB set.  For the first time, however, they also issued a smaller (108 card) "premium" version of the NPB set called "NPB Luxury Collection".  You can think of it as Epoch's version of doing what Topps does with their Chrome sets - making an uglier but more expensive parallel version of their flagship set.  Epoch published their "Pacific League Rookies" box set, also for the fifth consecutive year.

The rest of Epoch's offerings for the year were all expensive sets, starting off with the "Sadaharu Oh Super Luxury" set.  This extremely exclusive set was sold in boxes of four cards (one of which was guaranteed to be an autograph) for...um...Epoch actually never set an MSRP for it but I saw a box listed on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for 500,000 yen or roughly $4200.   The rest of the sets were not quite that expensive although still more than I'm willing to pay.  Epoch issued six of their combined active/OB team sets under the "Stars & Legends" line.  This time the teams were the Hawks, Marines, Carp, Tigers, Eagles and Giants.  Each of these sets were sold in boxes containing four cards for either 17,000 yen or (in the case of the Giants and Marines) 20,000 yen.  The other ultra-high-end set Epoch put out was the "Pacific League Premier Edition" set which they've done every year since 2016.  This set was sold in six card boxes for 15,000 yen.

Epoch also continued to issued their on-demand Epoch One cards.  This year's set weighed in at a whopping 1009 cards, blowing away the previous record of 766 cards in the 2019 set.  Cards were only issued for the same nine teams that they were issued for last year - the Marines, Dragons, Hawks, Tigers, Fighters, Lions, Eagles, Swallows and Giants.

2022 In Review - Calbee

Calbee celebrated their 50th year of publishing baseball cards by pretty much doing what they've been doing every year since 2004.  They issued their flagship set in their usual three Series in 2022 with Series One coming out in March, Series Two in June and Series Three in September.  

Each Series contained 72 "regular" player cards (six per team) plus a subset (Series One had a 19 card "Title Holder" subset, Series Two had a 12 card "OBP Leader" subset and Series Three had a 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset) and four checklist cards.  Add them all together and you get a 271 card base set - 216 "regular" player cards, 43 subset cards and twelve checklists.  There were also three insert sets - 75 "Star" cards distributed across all three Series (cards S-01 to S-24 in Series One, S-25 to S-49 in Series Two and S-50 to S-73 in Series Three), four "Legend" cards featuring players who retired at the end of 2021 and 25 "Reprint" cards.  The "Reprint" cards were the sole thing that Calbee did to celebrate their 50th Anniversary - they reprinted old Calbee cards of Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, all the managers (except Tsuyoshi Shinjyo) and a retired player from each team.  Additionally there was a limited edition 12 card box set associated with each Series that could only be purchased through Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The sets were "Clutch Hitter" for Series One, "Opening Pitcher" for Series Two and "HR Leader" for Series Three.

If you've read my posts about the three Series this year then you've seen that I felt Calbee kind of phoned it in this year, at least when it came to the photo selection on their "regular" player cards.  One thing I was happy about with this year's set is they greatly reduced the number of players who have multiple "regular" cards.  There was only six this year which means there were 210 unique players in the set.  As usaul there's a handful of players who have subset cards but not "regular" player cards.  The biggest name of this group is Munetaka Murakami, who had a "Title Holder" card and a "OBP Leader" card but nothing else.  Masataka Yoshida ("Title Holder" and "OBP Leader") and Kazuma Okamoto ("Title Holder" and "Exciting Scene") are also in this same boat.

I had hopes that Calbee would release a Samurai Japan set in the fall for the Gold Medal winning team from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.  Not only did Calbee not release a set but it looks like they no longer have the license for the team.

2022 In Review - BBM

BBM issued 30 sets in 2022, the same as they did in 2021.  As always I'm going by the "cover date" of the cards rather than the date of release so the "publication year" of 2022 covers cards issued in mid-December of 2021 up until the end of December of 2022.

The bulk of BBM's offerings - 24 of them - were what I refer to as their perennials - sets that they pretty much issue every year.  This includes the "flagship" sets 1st Version, 2nd Version and Fusion; the twelve "comprehensive" team sets for the Swallows, Hawks, Buffaloes, Dragons, Marines, Giants, Baystars, Lions, Carp, Eagles, Tigers and Fighters; the high-end "Genesis" set; the ultra-high-end "Glory" set; the Rookie Edition (draft pick) set; the two Dancing Cheerleader sets (Hana and Mai); the "Icons - Rough Diamonds" and Rookie Edition Premium box sets, the "Farewell" set for retiring baseball players and other athletes and the multi-sport set "Infinity".  

BBM may be changing things up a little for 2023 as they did not issue the 2023 version of "Glory" in mid-December of 2022 - instead they issued a new ultra-high-end set in November called "Glory Neo" with a 2022 "cover date".  This set may replace "Glory" in BBM's list of perennials.  Another set that may become an annual event is the ultra-high-end multi-sport set "Crown" which came out right at the end of December.

Two of the four remaining BBM sets for the year were the latest two entries in their OB team history series that they've been doing since 2020.  This year's sets were Swallows History 1950-2022 and Hawks History 1938-2022 which brought the total number of sets in the series to eight with only the Lions, Eagles, Fighters and Baystars (and Kintetsu Buffaloes) left to be done.  BBM also issued a box set celebrating Roki Sasaki's perfect game called "Roki Sasaki Perfect Game" and an ultra-high-end OB/active player team set for the Carp called "Carp Masters".

2021 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

I want to wrap up my review of the 2021 Japanese baseball card issues by going over every card release that wasn't from BBM, Calbee or Epoch.

The big news this past year was that Topps got a license to produce NPB cards.  The announcement came at the beginning of October but their first (and ultimately only) 2021 product did not hit stores until early December - a 216 card set that used a design that closely resembled the one used by Topps' 2021 MLB set.  A Chrome version of the set was originally also scheduled to be released in December but was delayed until January.

For the second year in a row, BBM and the Saitama Seibu Lions teamed up to produce a Lions team set that was sold at the Lions' team stores.  It had a 30 card base set plus a six card "Lions Heroes" insert set.

I'm still not 100% sure what their name is, but the company that goes by "TIC" or "Hits" issued four sets in 2021 - a "mini colored paper" (or "mini shikishi") team set for the Hawks and three more traditional looking team sets called "Used Ball" for the Swallows, Baystars and Hawks.

I'm sure that there are other team issued sets but the only ones I know for sure came from the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.  They put out their 1st Version set extremely early in the year - I think it was released in the first week of February.  They issued a 2nd Version set in June.  In addition, to commemorate the return of Masahiro Tanaka to Sendai after 7 years in MLB, they sold bags of potato chips with cards of Tanaka at their ballpark.

For the fourth year, Konami issued their "Baseball Collection", a collectible card game - the cards can be used in an arcade video baseball game.  I think there were a total of 900 cards issued - 75 per team - although I could have been wrong in my count.

I think the total number of Japanese sets for 2021 was 68 which is four more than in 2021 but five less than in 2019.

Over in Korea, SCC only issued two sets for the KBO.  In June they issued a set called "Rainbow" which appears to have been completely made up of serially numbered parallel cards - there's no base set.  In November they put out the more traditional "Golden Premium" set - at least "traditional" as KBO sets go.  In addition, Dan Skrezyna put out his latest "Foreign Attack" set which included all the foreign players in the KBO in 2019.