Summer To Fall Releases

I wanted to do a quick post on recent set announcements.  There haven't been a lot and I'm a little worried that I haven't heard about when Calbee's Series Two will be released.  Last year it came out in August but I've yet to see anything about it this year.

- I should mention that the Topps Finest set that was released in the US earlier this month included a 35 card "World's Finest" insert set that features players from this year's World Baseball Classic.  The set includes four players from Samurai Japan - Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami and Seiya Suzuki - along with one player from Korea - Lee Jung-hoo.  It's a bit disappointing that there aren't any players from either team who aren't on MLB rosters.  I took a quick look on Ebay to look at what the cards are selling for and the base versions aren't outrageously expensive.  The parallels are another matter, of course.

- Epoch has announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets.  The Lions set will be released on August 8th while the Tigers set will be out on the 22nd of that month.  The base set for the Lions will have 40 cards (39 for active players and one for an OB player - Orestes Destrade) while that of the Tigers will have 45 cards (40 for active players and five for OB players).  All the base cards in both sets will have a "hologram" parallel available.  Both sets have 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).  The Lions set has an additional three card insert set dedicated to Takumi Kuriyama.  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.  The Lions set has seven different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (39 cards), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (6), "Legendary" (1 - I assume it's Destrade), "Takumi Kuriyama" (3 - I think these are autographed version of the insert cards), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Combo" (3).  The Tigers set only has five different kinds of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (38), "Star" (7), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (5) and "Combo" (3).  I have no idea who the two active players that are in the base set but didn't sign "Authentic" autographs.  This brings the count of teams that Epoch has done "Premier Edition" sets for to eight.  The only teams they're missing are the Marines, Hawks, Eagles and Giants.

- Speaking of the Giants, Epoch has announced the first of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team sets for this year and it's for them.  The set has the somewhat unwieldy name of Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia and three card boxes of it will retail for 16,500 yen (roughly $100).  The base set will contain at least 55 cards - 22 active players and at least 33 OB players.  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.  There's also a six card "Unbreakable Spirit" insert set.  The memorabilia cards referred to by the set title are bat cards for eight active players and batting glove cards (and a batting glove and bat combo card) for one player (Yuta Izuguchi).  The set also includes several different types of autographed cards.  All the autographed cards are for OB players because the Giants do not allow authentic autographed cards for any of their active players.  The set will be in stores on October 3rd.

- BBM issues a multi-sport set each fall since 2016.  This set is usually called "Infinity" except in years that end in either "6" or "1".  Since this year is 2026, the set is not "Infinity" but "Masterpiece" instead.  The funky naming pattern is because BBM celebrates the founding of their parent company - BBM Magazine Sha - in 1946 so this year is their 80th Anniversity (with 2021 having been their 75th and 2016 being their 70th).  To be fair, I've never really noticed much of a difference between the sets called "Infinity" and the ones called "Masterpiece".  BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set but, as usual, it looks like most of them are for baseball players.  The list only includes OB players - and OB players who are actually retired as opposed to active in MLB OB players.  Some of the players are Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto and one foreign player - Warren Cromartie.  Other sports represented in the set include softball, soccer, rugby, basketball, volleyball, tennis, table tennis, badminton, pickleball, bowling, gymnastics, diving, sumo, judo and pro wrestling.  The set will be released in late October.

New Acquisitions

I thought I'd do a quick post about some cards I recently picked up.  It's been about 18 months since I stopped buying new stuff but I do get a hankering every so often to get some new ones.

I put in an order with COMC in mid-April but, of course, I didn't actually receive the cards until late May.  I had decided to get serious about replacing a couple old Calbee cards that I'd picked up on my last trip to Japan two years ago but I was only able to find one of the cards.  I'd brought home this card of Shitoshi Sekimoto from the "Florida Project" subset of the 1974/75 Calbee set (#708) that someone had used a pencil to highlight Sekimoto on:

The new version looks much better:

Since I was already ordering from COMC, I figured I'd look around and see if there was anything else I wanted at a reasonable price.  I decided to pick up this card of Masato Morishita because (1) I've been a fan of Morishita since seeing him pitch for Meiji back in 2019 and (2) I wanted to have an example of the 1990 inserts from last year's Topps NPB set (#90-7):

I also picked up a couple cards from the 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic set.  I picked up the "image variant" of Masataka Yoshida's card (#91):

I already had the base version:

I also grabbed the "Captains Of The World Baseball Classic" insert card of Ha-seong Kim (#CC-14):

Moving on to some stuff I ordered from Ebay...

I'm kind of low key trying to get one of each of the autographed cards for the Samurai Japan Collegiate team that were in the 2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  This card of Ryuta Hirose got me halfway there:

Since the remaining 14 cards I need to complete the set include Misho Nishikawa, Seiya Watanabe, Rui Muneyama and Natsuki Takeuchi, I'm not expecting to ever actually finish the set.  As I've always said, I'm cheap, so I'm not willing to pay what it'd take to get those cards.  But I'll keep trying to get the low hanging fruit when I can.

The last two cards are for Rintaro Sasaki of Stanford University.  Sasaki was drafted last fall's NPB draft by the Hawks and is potentially going to get taken in next month's MLB draft.  The Hawks' rights for him expire at the end of July so he can see if any MLB teams are interested before deciding if he wants to join Softbank.  Panini has done about a gazillion cards of him (with another two gazillion parallels) so I decided to pick up a card of him from each of the past two years.  Generally I find Panini's cards kind of hideous but I was able to find two that weren't too bad.  This 2024 Onyx Vintage Extended card (#OVRISA) show him in what I think is a Trenton Thunder uniform with all the logos airbrushed/photoshopped off:

The 2025 Prizm card (#271) shows him in his Stanford uniform:

This batch of cards scratched an itch for a bit.  Ryan's still picking stuff up for me and, while I try not to take him for granted, Kenny's probably preparing another envelope of goodies for me, so I'm sure to be getting some more new stuff soon.

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.

2026 Topps Now WBC Cards

With the WBC wrapping up last night, Topps has put their final Topps Now cards for the tournament up for sale.  I'm a bit surprised at how few cards they did this year.  The first time they did Topps Now cards for the WBC - back in 2017 - they did 64 total cards (plus three Spanish language parallels).  For the 2023 WBC, they did 73 Topps Now cards.  That's just the single cards and not the various team sets that were also for sale both years.  This year's set had only 43 cards plus a short printed image variation for Shohei Ohtani and an unnumbered card featuring both Ohtani and John Cena.

There were only four cards featuring members of Samurai Japan.  I swiped the images of the cards from Topps' website:

#WB4

#W9

#W10

#WB15

If you bought the Ohtani card, you had a shot at getting the image variation card or an autographed memorabilia card as well:

#W4 (image variant)

Here's the card with both Ohtani and Cena:

Team Korea had their best showing in the WBC since 2009 but that was only good enough to earn them two cards in the Topps Now set.  Both cards featured events in Korea's 11-4 victory over the Czech Republic on October 5th:

#W2

#W3

Topps says on their website that "Select hobby products will feature WBC-inspired inserts later this year."  I wonder if that means they won't be doing sets only available from their website (like the "Global Stars" and "World Baseball Classic" sets from 2023).  I will try to post about what else they produce this year but since I don't monitor MLB cards very closely, it wouldn't surprise me if I miss stuff.

Topps Now World Baseball Classic Cards

The World Baseball Classic kicked off today and, for the third time, Topps is issuing Topps Now cards for it.  So far there are only three cards available from the two games that were played today  - Travis Bazzana of Australia and Bo Gyeong Moon and Shay Witcomb of Korea.  All the cards will be listed on both Topps' US website and their Japanese website.   The cards are $8.99 each on the US site and 1485 yen on the Japanese one.  These three cards will apparently be on sale for 48 hours instead of what I thought was the standard 24 as they'll be available until 5:15 PM EST on March 7th.  I'm going to make a guess that Topps will release new cards at 5:15 EST for at least the next two days and then we'll see what happens on Sunday when most of the US switches to Daylight Savings Time.  My expectation is that the cards will go on sale at 6:15 EDT then but that's just a guess.

In addition to the single cards, Topps is also selling Topps Now team sets for six of the teams in the tournament - USA, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea and Puerto Rico.  The sets for the US, Japan, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela are $59.99 each (9900 yen on the Japanese site) and contain 13 cards - the 12 card base set plus one extra card that is either a parallel or an autographed card (I guess they've taken inspiration from BBM's box sets).  The Korea and Puerto Rico sets are $49.99 each (8250 yen) and have only 11 cards each - a 10 card base set plus the parallel or autograph card.  These sets will be available until 2:45 PM EDT on March 16th.

The twelve players listed for the Samurai Japan set are Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Kensuke Kondo, Yusei Kikuchi, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hiromi Itoh, Masataka Yoshida, Shugo Maki and Kaito Kozono.  There are seven different parallels available for all 12 players but there are only autographed cards available for four of them - Ohtani, Yamamoto, Murakami and Okamoto.

The ten Korean players are Jung Hoo Lee, Hyeseong Kim, Woo-Suk Go, Hyun Jin Ryu, Shay Whitcomb, Jahmai Jones, Dane Dunning, Do Yeong Kim, Hyun Min Ahn and Ju Won Kim.  Parallels are only available for the Jung Hoo Lee and Hyeseong Kim and Jung Hoo Lee is also the autograph available.

3/6 UPDATE - Checked Topps' website at 5:15 EST-ish and they've only added one card.  It was actually added earlier today.  The new card is for Shohei Ohtani's grand slam and is a little more expensive as it is $11.99 in the US and 1980 yen in Japan.  Apparently the difference in price is due to the possibility of getting a autographed and/or memorabilia card or an image variant card with it.  The card will be available until 2:45 EDT on Sunday, March 8th.

2026 Samurai Japan World Baseball Classic Roster

As promised (threatened?) the other day, here's my post for the roster of the Samurai Japan team for this year's World Baseball Classic.  Hard to believe the tournament finally starts in two days (well, it actually starts tomorrow, East Coast US time but Thursday in Japan.  Of course, it's WEDNESDAY in Japan as I type this so I guess it really does start tomorrow...).  It's even harder to believe that two weeks from right now is the final.

I picked Samurai Japan cards for the players whenever possible.  There were only five players who I didn't have a Samurai Japan card for and I would have for a couple of them if I'd continued getting cards last year.  I also wanted to highlight Samurai Japan cards for events other than the World Baseball Classic but there the only national team cards I had for one player (Taisei Makihara) were from the 2023 tournament so I had to go with that.

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #25

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #7

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes "Rack Pack" Japan Collegiate Team #8

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #8 Yumeto Kanemaru

2017 BBM 2nd Version #428 (Secret Version)

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #35

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #014

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #29

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #20

2023 Topps Japan Edition WBC Team #WBC-24

2023 Calbee Hawks #SH-35

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #4 Hiroya Miyagi

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #3

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #003

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-20

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-06

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27 Kazuma Okamoto

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan Team Set #SJ-4

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #34

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #8

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #25 Ukyo Shuto

2024 Epoch NPB #175

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-03

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship Team Set #SJ-3 Chihiro Sumida

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-09 Seiya Suzuki

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #30

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #6 Atsuki Taneichi

2020 BBM 2nd Version #454 (Secret Version)

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-19 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan Special Box Set #M-8 Masataka Yoshida

I was kind of surprised when looking back through my old posts to discover that I had not done posts for the 2009 and 2013 WBC rosters.  I didn't start doing it until the 2017 tournament.  This will probably be the last time I do it (at least with cards that I actually own) as I'm sure the 2029 team will have young players who I won't have any cards for.

Triple Champs

In the wake of the Dodgers' World Series championship the other day, there was some chatter on Twitter about not only who had won a championship in both NPB and MLB but who on that list had also won a World Baseball Classic championship.  The Dodger's victory meant that that group doubled in size as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto joined Daisuke Matsuzaka and Koji Uehara.  Matsuzaka and Uehara were both on the 2006 WBC champs and Matsuzaka repeated in 2009.  Between Matsuzaka and Ohtani, the group includes the winners of three of the five WBC MVP awards with Matsuzaka having won in both 2006 and 2009 and Ohtani having won in 2023.  Here are WBC cards for all four players:

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC All Tournament Team #W09A001

2006 Upper Deck WBC Moments #CM-22

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #17

2023 Topps Now WBC #WBC-27

There's been some additional comments about Yamamoto having not only an NPB championship, an MLB championship and a WBC championship but also a Premier 12 (2019) championship and an Olympic Gold Medal (officially 2020 but actually 2021).  He's obviously the only one with all five of those.  Hell, he's the only one with even four of those although Matsuzaka and Uehara have Bronze Medals from the 2004 Athens games and Ohtani has a "bronze medal" for the 2015 Premier 12.  And for what it's worth, Matsuzaka's the only one of the four to also have a Summer Koshien championship (1998).

Reading all this made me start wondering how many other players have been on the winning team for the Premier 12, the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic.  Luckily, it's not hard to figure out since there's only been two Premier 12s and the only non-Japanese team to win it - South Korea in 2015 - has never won the WBC.  So it's pretty quickly obvious that the only guys to win all three are the players who, like Yamamoto, were on the Samurai Japan rosters for the 2019 Premier 12, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (played in Yokohama in 2021) and the 2023 World Baseball Classic.  There are six such players, including Yamamoto:

2023 Topps Now WBC Champions #WBCJPN-6

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #16 Takuya Kai

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-08 Kensuke Kondoh

2023 BBM Infinity #17

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #10 (facsimile signature parallel) Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2023 Topps World Baseball Classic #91

I wanted to pick cards from the sets for the three tournaments but I had to settle for only two of them because for some unknown reason, there were no cards issued for the Olympic team.

Obviously these six have been in this club for over a year and a half now but until the discussion about Yamamoto, it never occurred to me to see who else had been on the winners for all three tournaments.  With the 2024 Premier 12 starting next week, I thought it'd be interesting to see if there's anyone else who might join this club should Japan repeat as tournament champions.

There isn't.

The roster that was originally announced had Hiromi Itoh on it who was on both the Olympic and WBC teams but he's since been scratched.  Taisei (Ota), Hiroto Takahashi, Shosei Togo and Shugo Maki were all on the WBC squad but not on the Olympic team while Ryoya Kurihara was on the Olympic team but not the WBC one.  The only player on the roster who was on both the WBC and Olympic teams is Sosuke Genda, who's already a member of this club.