Run The Series - BBM Classic

It's been about two years now since Topps announced that they had a license to do NPB baseball cards and pretty much ever since then I've been saying that Topps needs do an Archives or Heritage style set using their classic card designs for NPB players.  There is precedent for doing such a set in Japan - the Classic set released by BBM annually between 2013 and 2016.

The four BBM Classic sets pretty much followed the same pattern with one minor exception.  Each set except the first had a 108 card base set consisting of 72 cards of active players and 36 cards of OB players (except the 2013 set).  For some reason, the 2013 set had 109 total cards as they had one extra OB player.  The cards for the active players reused an earlier BBM "flagship" set design.  The 2013 set used the design of BBM's initial set from 1991, 2014 used the 1992 design, 2015 used the 1993 design and you've probably already guessed that 2016 used the 1994 design.  In addition each set had several insert sets associated with it that reused designs from various BBM sets in the past.  The OB cards were a little less consistent as two of the sets reused the 2002 All Time Heroes design and the other two sets used a new design.

The active player cards were pretty true to the original design.  BBM updated the year in their logos but otherwise they looked like the logos used each year.  The rookie cards used the same box or icon that the original sets had used.  The big difference between the original 1991-94 cards and the Classic versions is that while the original cards had been a smaller than standard size of 2 3/8" x 3 5/16", the Classic cards were all the standard 2 1/2" x 3 1.2".

I figured I'd go through each set quickly and show a couple of the active player cards and one of the OB cards.  I'd also mention the inserts and show any that I have.  I'd also link to the posts I did for each set when they originally came out (or at least when I got them which might have been a few months later).

The 2013 set came out at the end of June that year.  This was one of the sets that used the 2002 All Time Heroes set for the OB cards.  It had three insert sets - "Rivals" based on the 1997 flagship insert set of the same name, "00's Best 9" based on the "90's Best 9" insert set from the 2000 flagship set and "Above Average" based on the insert set with the same name from the 1999 Diamond Heroes set.  The Rivals set had 24 cards - two per team that were paired up with each other - while the other two had 12 cards each (1 per team despite the "Best 9" name).  The two 12 card insert sets were much more scarce than the "Rivals" set.  I think all the insert sets had active players but I don't know about the "00's Best 9" set for sure.

2013 BBM Classic #055

2013 BBM Classic #001

2013 BBM Classic #087

2013 BBM Classic "Rivals" #R07 & #R08

The 2014 set didn't come out until mid-November, late enough that I started to doubt that BBM was doing a second installment of the set.  The OB cards used a completely new design - at least I think it was a new design although it may have been used for a non-baseball set that I'm not aware of.  The non-premium insert set was a 12 card "Best 9" set based on the 1997 Best 9 card format (and again not really a "Best 9" but featuring one player per team).  There were three other 12 card insert sets that apparently were more limited - "Run Producers" (based on the Diamond Heroes insert set - BBM's website said it was from 1998 but I don't know that there WAS a "Run Producers" insert set with the 1998 Diamond Heroes set), "Above Average" and "Pitcher Perfect" (both based on insert sets from the 1999 Diamond Heroes set).  

2014 BBM Classic #063

2014 BBM Classic #009

2014 BBM Classic #086

The 2015 set came out in June that year which seemed more "normal".  The set had several similarities to the 2014 set - the OB cards used a similar format to the 2014 cards and the two premium insert sets - "Above Average" and "Pitcher Perfect" - were a repeat from the 2014 set (as in using the same design - I don't know that they had the same 12 players in each).  The non-premium insert set was the 24 "All Stars" set that uses the same design as the 2002 Touch The Game set's insert set of the same name - one again the set name was a misnomer as it featured two players from each team who weren't necessarily All Stars.

2015 BBM Classic #056

2015 BBM Classic #007

2015 BBM Classic #084

2015 BBM Classic "All Star" #AS15

For the 2016 set (which was released in July), BBM returned to using the "All Time Heroes" design for the OB cards.  The non-premium insert set was the 24 card "All Around Players" set that reprised an insert set from the 1995 BBM set.  The premium insert set was a 12 card "3D Magic" lenticular set that resembled the "Magic Motion" insert cards from the 1996 "flagship" set.  There were also 12 reprints of BBM rookie cards of active players - I don't know if they were premium or not.

2016 BBM Classic #040

2016 BBM Classic #036

2016 BBM Classic #078

2016 BBM Classic "All Around Players" #AA20

I don't know why but BBM discontinued this set after 2016.  I've wondered sometimes if BBM decided that since the cards in the 1995 set (and all their sets afterwards) were standard size, there was no need to make more cards at the standard size.  This strikes me as a silly reason though.

I really did like these sets but I wish they had been better.  I'd have preferred not having the OB cards and it would have been nice to have had subsets that called back to the subsets in the original sets (especially the subset showing all the stadiums in use from the 1992 set) like Topps' Heritage sets have.  I'd really be happy if BBM brought these sets back.

I should mention here that there was actually one other "Classic" set from BBM but it didn't follow the same format.  In March of 2014, BBM issued a box set called "Rookie Edition Classic".  The base set contained 24 cards - two per team of course.  All the cards used the design from the 2003 BBM Rookie Edition set - the inaugural edition of BBM's annual draft pick set.  Now what you would have expected is that BBM would have had cards of the 2013 draft picks in this set, right?  After all, the regular Classic set (of which there had only been one at this point) showed active players in the old card design so it would make sense that "Rookie Edition Classic" would show the current draft picks using the old card design, wouldn't it?  But that's not what happened.  Instead, BBM chose an active player from each team and used a photo of the player from his rookie season, even if the player wasn't on his current team then (for example Kazuo Matsui was representing the Eagles but his photo was from the Lions).  That accounted for half the cards in the set.  The other half were OB players from each team - again showing them in their rookie season.  The photos used also mess up how the set follows the original as only one or two of them were taken when the player attended the press conference when the team formally introduces the draft class which is where all the Rookie Edition photos for the draft picks come from.  It doesn't appear that this was a popular set and BBM never did another edition of it.  Here's a card of a (then) active player and an OB player:

2014 BBM Rookie Edition Classic #05

2014 BBM Rookie Edition Classic #20

Iconography

BBM has issued a box set called "Icons" every March since 2013.  Each year's edition has a different theme - in 2013 it was "Hope" (young players), 2014 was "Big Guns" (power hitters), 2015 was "Aces" (pitchers, obviously), 2016 was "Speed" (fast pitchers and base runners), 2017 was "Japan Pride" (players who had suited up for some version of the national team), 2018 was "Fanfare" (players who were drafted with much acclaim), 2019 was "Teenage Memories" (players who debuted as teenagers) and 2020 was "Fireballers" (fastball pitchers).  (The 2021 set's theme is "Progress" and supposedly features players who "made progress" in 2020.)  

The "Icons" sets grew out of some box sets BBM did in 2011 and 2012 called "Platinum Age" and "Diamond Age" that featured players born in 1988 and 1989 respectively.  I've always felt the 2011 set was an excuse to put out yet another card of Yuki Saitoh during his rookie year.  To some extent that continues to be the purpose of the Icons sets - get cards of rookies onto the market in the period of time between the publication of Rookie Edition (usually February) and 1st Version (April).  These sets are the first ones to show the rookies in action - as opposed to their staged photos from the team's draft class introductory press conferences used for Rookie Edition.  Not all the players in the sets are rookies, however.  I also feel that BBM makes an effort to get cards of players who've changed teams over the winter into these sets as well.

You may have noticed that the above list of Icons sets didn't have links for three of them.  That's because I didn't have those sets until Ryan picked them up for me during the past year.  I'll spend the rest of this post writing about those last three sets.  Also note that I'm only talking about the base sets here - each set was packaged up with a "special" insert card that could be some sort of parallel or autographed card.

As I mentioned, the 2013 set was entitled "Hope" and featured young players.  The set has 27 cards - 24 cards for individual players (2 per team) and three combination cards.  The player cards include five 2012 draft picks - Shohei Ohtani, Tomoyuki Sugano, Shintaro Fujinami, Nao Higashihama and Koji Fukutani.  Other players in the set include Tetsuto Yamada, Yusei Kikuchi, Shuhei Takahashi, Yusuke Nomura, Naruki Nishikawa and Naoya Masuda.  The three combination cards are entitled "Koshien Winners" (Shota Dohbayashi and Fujinami), "Michinoku Express" (Kikuchi and Ohtani) and "Age Of Okinawa" (Ryosuke Miyaguni and Higashihama).

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #10

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #01

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #05

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #26

The 2014 "Icons - Big Guns" set was also 27 cards and again featured 24 player cards and three "other" cards (two multiplayer cards plus a card for Wladimir Balentien setting the single season home run record in 2013).  The 2015 "Icons - Aces" set grew to 36 cards - all player cards (three per team) - which is the size the set has been ever since.

The 2016 "Icons - Speed" set included both pitchers who throw fast and position players who run the bases fast.  It included five players who were rookies in 2016 - Louis Okoye, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, Taiga Hirasawa,  Junpei Takahashi and Shun Takayama.  Other players in the set include Ohtani, Yamada, Fujinami, Kikuchi, Yuki Yangita, Shogo Akiyama, Shun Yamaguchi, Hirokazu Sawamura, Dennis Sarfate, Yoshio Itoi, Yuki Matsui, Takahiro Norimoto and Takahiro Suzuki.  Most of the position players are depicted as baserunners which is a nice deviation from BBM's constant "batters batting" poses.

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #31

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #09

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #22

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #03

The 2020 set - "Fireballers" - has nothing to do with this but instead (like the 2016 set) features players who throw fast.  It includes six members of the 2019 draft class - Roki Sasaki, Masato Morishita, Junya Nishi, Miroya Miyagi, Tetsu Miyagawa and Yasunobu Okugawa.  It also include Daisuke Matsuzaka, who appears to be the sole example of a veteran player who appears with his new team in one of these three sets (he rejoined the Lions prior to the 2020 season).  Other players in the set include Fujinami (who has appeared in seven of the eight Icons sets), Sugano, Sawamura, Matsui, Norimoto, Yudai Ohno, Kodai Senga, Kyuji Fujinami, Kohei Arihara and Yasuaki Yamasaki.

2020 BBM Icons - Fireballers #02

2020 BBM Icons - Fireballers #29

2020 BBM Icons - Fireballers #11

2020 BBM Icons - Fireballers #18

If you'd like to see all the cards in these three sets, they're all on-line at Jambalaya - 2013, 2016 and 2020.

Run The Series - BBM Premium Malts

The Suntory Brewery has sponsored an old timers game called the "Dream Match" almost every year since 1995.  This year's game was supposed to have taken place last Monday but obviously was cancelled due to the on-going pandemic.  BBM issued box sets commemorating three of the games - 2009, 2010 and 2012 (there was no game in 2011 - I suspect this was due to the Tohoku Earthquake).  I thought I'd due a post that was a round up of this series of sets - partly because Dan sent me the 2012 set a month or so ago.

The 2009 base set contained 51 cards, the 2010 set contained 54 cards and the 2012 set had 49 cards.  Each card represented one player from the game as there were no subsets.  As is standard for BBM, each box included a bonus autograph or memorabilia card and as is standard for me, I didn't get any sets that had the bonus card (the set Dan sent me actually came from George originally who pulled an Isao Harimoto auto from his unopened set).

There are 77 different players who appear at least in at least one of these sets.  31 of those 77 appear in all three sets.  The players run the gamut from very famous (there are five Hall Of Famers and six Meikyukai members) to extremely obscure (Tatsuya Shiokawa) with a lot of guys falling in between.  There's only one foreign player - Randy Bass.  The oldest players are Eiji Bando and Harimoto while the youngest player was Shiokawa.  Here's a list of all the players who appear in the sets:

Player	DOB	2009	2010	2012	Hall Of Fame	Meikyukai
Awano, Hideyuki	1964-07-28	x	x
Bando, Eiji	1940-04-15	x	x	x
Bass, Randy	1954-03-13	x	x	x
Egawa, Suguru	1955-05-25		x
Enatsu, Yutaka	1948-05-15		x
Endo, Kazuhiko	1955-04-19			x
Gotoh, Koji	1969-05-14	x
Hamanaka, Osamu	1978-07-09			x
Harimoto, Isao	1940-06-19	x	x	x	1990	x
Hashimoto, Kiyoshi	1969-05-22	x	x	x
Hata, Shinji	1962-07-29	x	x
Hatsushiba, Kiyoshi	1967-02-26	x	x	x
Higashio, Osamu	1950-05-18	x	x	x	2010	x
Hikono, Toshikatsu	1964-10-12		x
Hirosawa, Katsumi	1962-04-10		x	x
Ikeda, Chikafusa	1959-05-17		x
Ikegaya, Kojiro	1952-06-28	x	x	x
Ikeyama, Takahiro	1965-12-17		x
Imanaka, Shinji	1971-03-06		x
Ishige, Hiromichi	1956-09-22	x	x	x
Ishii, Hiroo	1964-06-21	x		x
Ishii, Masahiro	1960-09-04	x	x
Itoh, Tsutomu	1962-08-29	x			2017
Iwata, Toru	1967-02-12			x
Kakefu, Masayuki	1955-05-09	x		x
Kanemura, Satoru	1976-04-19			x
Kanemura, Yoshiaki	1963-08-27	x	x	x
Kawamata, Yonetoshi	1960-08-04	x	x
Kawatoh, Kozo	1949-07-05	x	x	x
Kobayakawa, Takehiko	1961-11-15		x
Kohda, Isao	1965-05-29			x
Kohno, Hirofumi	1962-04-28	x
Komada, Norihiro	1962-09-14		x	x		x
Kubo, Fumio	1962-12-03	x	x	x
Kuwata, Masumi	1968-04-01	x	x	x
Makihara, Hiromi	1963-08-11	x	x	x
Matsumoto, Tadashi	1954-08-08	x	x	x
Miyamoto, Kazutomo	1964-02-13	x	x	x
Mizuno, Katsuhito	1965-09-03	x	x	x
Motoki, Daisuke	1971-12-30		x	x
Naitoh, Naoyuki "Gyaos"	1968-07-24		x
Nakahama, Hiroyuki	1978-04-10			x
Nishioka, Yoshihiro	1961-06-28		x
Nishizaki, Yukihiro	1964-04-13	x	x	x
Nomura, Hiroki	1969-06-30			x
Nomura, Kenjiro	1966-09-19	x				x
Ohno, Yutaka	1955-08-30	x			2013
Ohsawa, Keiji	1932-03-14	x	x
Ohtsuka, Koji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Ohya, Akihiko	1947-12-20		x	x
Okada, Akinobu	1957-11-25	x
Onoue, Akira	1959-04-22	x
Sadaoka, Shoji	1956-01-29	x	x	x
Saitoh, Akio	1955-02-23	x	x	x
Sano, Motokuni	1958-03-06	x	x	x
Sano, Shigeki	1968-04-30	x	x	x
Sasaoka, Shinji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Satoh, Hiroshi	1962-06-09	x	x	x
Satoh, Kazuhiro "Punch"	1964-12-03	x	x	x
Shiokawa, Tatsuya	1983-03-15			x
Shoji, Tomohisa	1953-05-30	x	x	x
Takagi, Yutaka	1957-10-22	x	x
Takahashi, Masahiro	1964-07-10	x	x	x
Takashiro, Nobuhiro	1954-05-27	x
Takeda, Kazuhiro	1965-06-22	x
Tanaka, Yukio	1967-12-14	x				x
Tao, Yasushi	1954-01-08	x	x	x
Tomashino, Kenji	1966-10-11	x	x	x
Wakana, Yoshiharu	1953-12-05	x	x	x
Yamakura, Kazuhiro	1955-09-02		x
Yamamoto, Kazunori	1957-10-18		x
Yamamoto, Koji (1946)	1946-10-25	x	x	x	2008	x
Yamamoto, Koji (1951)	1951-12-25	x
Yashiki, Kaname	1959-06-11	x	x	x
Yoda, Tsuyoshi	1965-12-04			x
Yojoh, Minoru	1966-09-27			x
Yoshimura, Sadaaki	1963-04-27			x

Here are two sample cards from each set:

09 BBM The Premium Malts #10

09 BBM The Premium Malts #45

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #04

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #53

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #25

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #01

These are kind of fun little sets although I'm not sure I've really missed BBM continuing to do them.  Part of the problem I have with the sets is that the same players appear over and over.  I suspect there's been enough turnover in the players who appear in the games since 2012 that a new set would be more interesting.  Some of the players who appeared in last year's game include Atsuya Furuta, Akinori Iwamura, Tadashi Settsu, Yoshinobu Takahashi and Kei Igawa - it might be fun to see what they look like now that they've been retired for awhile.

Thanks to George and Dan for getting me the 2012 set.

BBM Greatest Games series

Between fall of 2012 and the end of 2013, BBM issued four box sets in a series they called "Greatest Games".  I've written briefly about the first three sets in the series but now that it seems pretty obvious that BBM is not continuing the series, I thought I'd do a post on the whole thing.

Each of the four sets commemorated a game the BBM considered significant.  Each set contains most (if not all) of the players who appeared in the set along with the managers of each team involved.  Most of the photos used appear to have been taken at the actual game being celebrated.  Each set also included one or more cards showing additional events, either directly game related or related to the season of the winning team.  As is typical for BBM, each box contained the complete base set (32 or 36 cards) plus one "special" card.  Most of the "special" cards were autograph cards (either real or printed) although the first two sets featured other possibilities.

BBM picked a game from each of the four previous decades to commemorate, although they did not do them in chronological order.  Each of the games determined a pennant winner.

The first set, which was the only one released in 2012, was for the Giants-Dragons game on October 8, 1994.  This game was won by the Giants 6-3.  It is significant as it clinched the first pennant for Shigeo Nagashima during his second stint as Giants manager and would lead to his first ever Nippon Series championship against the Lions.  Hiromitsu Ochiai, who hasn't appeared on a baseball card since the Dragons fired him in 2011, played in the game but does not appear in the set (obviously).  The set featured 10 possible "film" cards as possible "special" cards in addition to the autograph cards.  The base set includes 36 cards - 17 Dragons players, 14 Giants players and five cards of game highlights.

#07

#20

#33

The second set, released in early 2013, was for a Giants-Tigers game on October 22, 1973 (which coincidentally is the day Ichiro Suzuki was born).  The Giants 9-0 drubbing of the Tigers clinched their ninth straight (and final) Central League pennant of the V9 era.  This set also is missing a player from the Giants - Isao Shibata.  There are 9 cards with a "P" prefix listed on the back of the box as possible "special" cards - I suspect that these are "photo" cards but I haven't found an example anywhere to confirm this.  At 32 cards, this set is the smallest of the four sets - 18 Tigers, 10 Giants and four game highlights (more or less - one is a photo of Shigeo Nagashima showing off his broken finger).

#04

#24

#30

The third set, released in the summer of 2013, was for the September 26, 2001 game between the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix Blue Wave.  The Buffaloes won the game and clinched the Pacific League pennant on a pinch hit, walk off grand slam.  This is also a 36 card base set - 15 Blue Wave, 17 Buffaloes and four "2001 Buffaloes Highlights".

#09

#25

#34

The final set, released last December, was for the October 16, 1985 game between the Tigers and the Swallows that ended in a 5-5 tie.  That tie enabled the Tigers to clinch their first Central League pennant in 21 years and helped propel them to their first (and still only) Nippon Series championship.  Once again, there were 36 cards in the base set - 20 Tigers, 15 Swallows and one highlight card.

#13

#32

#36

Frankly the set for the 2001 game stands out for a number of reasons - it's the only Pacific League game, it's the only game won by the home team and it's the only game that really seems like it would have been exciting to watch.  Most importantly, it's the only set of the four that isn't fairly ugly.  It's got a nice design and the photos are fairly clear - I suspect the latter is due to the fact that this particular game was played inside.  I find the designs for the other three sets to be unattractive (well, the 1985 set isn't too bad) and the photographs used are very poor.  The pictures in the 1994 set are very dark while the 1973 set uses black and white photos that may or may not have been taken at the actual game.  Some of them are actually blurry.  The 1985 set's photos are a little better than the 1994 ones but they are still pretty grainy.

I'm a big fan of BBM's historic sets but I was pretty disappointed with these sets, with the exception of the 2001 game's set.  It was an interesting idea, but the execution was poor.