2020 BBM Time Travel 1985

BBM's first set of 2020 (even though it was actually released in mid-December of 2019) is the fourth edition of their annual "Time Travel" set.  Each of the "Time Travel" sets highlights a particular season and this year's edition is for 1985.

The point of these sets is to look and feel like they were actually released in the highlighted years.  The cards have a retro feel to them with a matte finish rather than the usual glossy finish and monochromatic backs rather than the standard full color ones.  The stats on the back of the player cards only go up to the year in question.

The "Time Travel 1985" set has a base set of 97 cards split into five sections.  The majority of the cards (72 of them) are the "regular" player cards.  In addition there's a nine card subset for players who retired in 1985, a six card subset of 1985 baseball highlights, a six card subset for active NPB players who were born in 1985 and a four card subset of pop culture highlights from the year.

The 72 player cards are split up evenly among the 12 teams so there's six per team.  As you'd expect there's a bunch of the stars from the year in the set including Hall Of Famers Koji Akiyama, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Tatsunori Hara, Hisashi Yamada, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Koji Yamamoto, Sachio Kinugasa, Hiromitsu Kadota, Tsutomu Itoh  and Choji Murata along with Kenichi Yazawa, Suguru Egawa, Masayuki Kakefu, Akinobu Mayumi and Genji Kaku.  Sadaharu Oh who was manager of the Giants that year is also included.  I want to comment on Murata's inclusion as this is the second consecutive "Time Travel" set he's appeared in after appearing in only a couple sets the previous 15 years (he's also in Epoch's Lotte 50th Anniversary set from last year).  I believe Wakamatsu is the only player to appear in all four "Time Travel" sets - he had regular player cards in the 1975 and 1979 sets and a "Retiring Player" subset card in the 1989 set.

Last year I said I wasn't going to nit-pick the player selection for the set but this year I really feel I have to.  The set only includes one Westerner - Randy Bass of the Tigers.  I can't complain about his being included since he won the Central League Triple Crown that year but the set could have also included Boomer Wells, Leon Lee and Leron Lee.  Warren Cromartie would also have been an appropriate selection but as usual he's not in the set.  The biggest omission of this set though is another player who's been missing from OB sets lately - Hiromitsu Ochiai.  Ochiai won the Pacific League Triple Crown that year (it was his second Triple Crown - he'd win it again in 1986) and was MVP and he's not in the set.  Hard to tell the story of NPB in 1985 without him.

The photos on the cards are a good mix of action, posed and candid shots.  I wish BBM would use a mix like this for their modern cards.  Here's some example cards:

#13

#04

#34

#45

#39

#59

Matsunaga won the MVP award for the third All Star and won an Isuzu Piazza.  I'm hoping that Mike Piazza won an Izuzu Matsunaga at some point in his career.

Any 1985 rookies in the set (like Hirosawa) get the "Rookie" icon on their cards.

Here's what the card backs look like:

#29 Kenichi Yazawa

At nine cards the "Retiring Players" subset is the largest it's ever been - it was six cards in each of the 1989 and 1979 sets (and didn't appear in the 1975 set).  The players featured are Kenji Furusawa, Kojiro Ikegaya, Hiroaki Inoue, Hiromu Matsuoka, Jitsuo Mizutani, Akihiko Ohya, Shoji Sadaoka, Kohei Shimamoto and Hall Of Famer Keishi Suzuki:

#79

The six baseball highlights of 1985 included in the set are Masahiro Nakane of the Buffaloes hitting the 50,000th professional baseball home run on April 23rd, Keijiro Yumioka of the Braves sacrificing four times in a game on June 9th, Yuiko Tanaka of the Fighters (that one, not that one) no-hitting the Buffaloes also on June 9th, Katsuo Hirata of the Tigers also sacrificing four times in a game on July 18th, Koji Yamamoto of the Carp getting his record 14th All Star Game home run on July 23rd and Yutaka Fukumoto of the Braves setting the career record for triples on July 26th.  Yumioka and Yamamoto are the only players of the six who have a regular player card in the set.  I have to say I'm a bit surprised that this subset does not include a card for the Tigers winning the Nippon Series as it was the biggest baseball story of the year - it was the first and still only time the Tigers won the Series.  Here's the card for Tanaka's no-hitter:

#84

The six active players included in the "Born In 1985" subset are Kentaro Kuwahara of the Tigers, Naoki Miyanishi of the Fighters, Toru Murata of the Fighters, Yoshihisa Naruse of the Buffaloes, Tomohisa Ohtani of the Marines, and Tatsuya Uchi of the Marines.

#92

The four "Pop Culture" cards are for Miki Asakura's hit single covering "Holding Out For A Hero", the retirement of rugby star Yuji Matsuo,  broadcaster Sadao Uekusa calling the Tigers back-to-back-to-back home runs by Randy Bass, Masayuki Kakefu and Akinobu Okada on April 17th against the Giants (which seems more like a baseball highlight than a pop culture moment) and the introduction of the 100 series of Shinkansen trains.  Here's the Asakura card:

#94

And here's her version of the song:



The set has two insert sets that I splurged for that are dedicated to various Title Holders from 1985.  There's an eight card set for the Central League and a ten card set for the Pacific League.  It's a bit odd that there's two cards in the Central League set for Randy Bass - one celebrating him winning the MVP as well as leading the league in batting average, home runs, RBI, hits, game winning RBI and on base percentage and the other for him winning the Nippon Series MVP.  There's also a card for Tigers manager Yoshio Yoshida winning the Shoriki Award - it's kind of odd that he appears on an insert card but not in the regular set.

#CT8

#PT3

The cards feature shiny gold lettering for the "Title" the player/manager holds so they don't necessarily scan well.

So I have my nit-picks with the set but on the whole I like it.  I've been enjoying the "Time Travel" sets and I hope BBM continues them.  As always I'm curious to see what they do next.  I haven't figured out a pattern yet although it's kind of odd that so far the years have either ended in "5" or "9".

As always you can see all the cards at Jambalaya.  Ryan did a post on this set yesterday.

Card Of The Week January 5

The news broke on Friday that Fukuoka Softbank Hawks farm hand Oscar Colas has defected from his native Cuba and is seeking a contract with a Major League team.  Colas and pitcher Livan Moinelo joined the Hawks as ikusei players in May of 2017.  While Moinelo (who is three years older than Colas) quickly moved to the official roster and became an integral part of the bullpen for the Hawks Nippon Series winning teams of the past three years, Colas remained with the ikusei squad for the next two seasons.

He only appeared briefly with the Hawks ni-gun team in 2017, hitting .250 in four at bats in two games.  He apparently spent more time with the Hawks san-gun team which is a kind of an unofficial level.  The Hawks have enough ikusei players to form a team so they play games against corporate and independent league teams.  I don't know of any statistics for the league so I don't know how well he played.  One of the intriguing things about Colas is that he has pitched some in Cuba and did it as well at the san-gun level in Japan - here's video of him pitching against the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the Shikoku Island League on August 1st, 2017 - if you watch the full video you'll also see him hitting in games against the Kagawa Olive Guyners of the same league on July 29th and 30th (H/T Jim Allen for the video):



He hit .212 in 158 plate appearances in 55 games with the ni-gun team in 2018.  He showed some power with five doubles, three triples and seven home runs.  I suspect he still spent a lot of time that year with the san-gun team.

Colas had a break through year this past season.  He hit .302 with 11 home runs (one of which I saw at Koshien on May 31st) in 66 games with the ni-gun squad which earned him a promotion to the official 70 man roster on June 24th (to be clear - he hadn't played in 66 games by June 24th but there's no differentiation in his stats between him being ikusei and being on the 70 man roster).  He made his debut with the ichi-gun team on August 18th and did this in his first at bat (H/T Jim Allen again):


I like how his teammates gave him the traditional cold shoulder for rookie home runs when he got back to the dugout.

He ultimately got into 7 games with the top team in 2019, hitting .278 with just the one home run in 21 plate appearances. 

Colas is being touted as the Cuban Shohei Ohtani which I view as a bit ridiculous.  Colas has now played in 7 games at the top level in Japan, all as a batter.  At the same age, Ohtani had played in 234 games at the top level as a hitter as well as appearing in 59 games as a pitcher and earning a win/loss record of 29-9.  Colas has not thrown a pitch at even the ni-gun level in Japan and I don't know how long ago he pitched at the san-gun level.  Comparing him to Ohtani is a stretch.

I've been asked by a couple people about baseball cards for Colas.  He only has a couple that I know of.  Since BBM doesn't include the ikusei players in their team sets he didn't appear in their sets for the Hawks in 2017 or 2018 but he was registered to the 70 man roster this past year in time for the 2019 edition:

2019 BBM Hawks #H65

He also has two Epoch One cards - one commemorating his registration and the other celebrating his debut home run.  The print runs are 35 copies for the first card and 27 copies for the second one.

I do not know of any cards of him beyond those three.  It's possible that there are Hawks team issued sets from the past three years that included ikusei players but I haven't seen any of them.

Japanese National Team Sets

With the double whammy of baseball returning to the Olympics after a 12 year hiatus (which actually means they just missed the 2012 London games and the 2016 Rio games) AND the fact that Japan is hosting the 2020 games, I thought it'd be good to do a series of posts on the Japanese baseball team from each of the previous Olympics.  This post, however, is not part of that series.  I want to first do a post to revise the list of baseball card sets featuring the Japanese National Team that I originally published just before the 2008 Beijing games.  I originally intended to publish this post in December but I was waiting on getting one last National Team set in hand before I did, so I had to wait until now.  I'll be starting the series of Olympic team posts with the 1984 team later this month and then do one team a month until July which takes me right up to the games themselves in August.

The reason I'm doing a separate post for the National Team sets is to highlight the fact that while there have been a decent number of sets featuring the Japanese National Team from various international tournaments, only two of the seven Olympics that have featured baseball have been represented in those sets.  In contrast I believe that US Olympic teams from 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2000 have been represented in baseball cards, leaving only 1996 and 2008 (maybe) with no cards (Team USA did not qualify for the 2004 Athens games).

The only sets I'll be mentioning in this post will be for the professional team so I won't talk about the four collegiate National Team sets that I know of (2008 Upper Deck, 2008 BBM, and 2013 and 2019 Panini).

I have written about most of these sets in the past so in many cases I'll simply reference the previous posts.

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #218

The first card set I know of that featured the Japanese National Team was the 2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards set, a 264(!) card set featuring a large subset of the Japanese Olympic team in all sports, not just baseball.  There's a 19 card subset in the set that features 19 (obviously) of the 24 players from the baseball team.  The Sydney games were the first ones to allow professional baseball players and the team was made up of eight players from NPB, eleven players from the corporate/industrial leagues and five collegiate players.  It is the collegiate players who are not included in the set which is a pity because one of them was Chuo University's Shinnosuke Abe.  Several of the corporate players went on to play in NPB (Shunsuke Watanabe, Toshiya Sugiuchi and Norihiro Akahoshi are the big ones) so this set is one of the few that features "pre-rookie" cards for Japanese players.

2001 Calbee #J-08

Calbee's Series One in 2001 included an eight card subset featuring the 8 NPB players from 2000 Olympic team - Masato Kawano, Tomohiro Kuroki, Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Norihiro Nakamura, Fumihiro Suzuki, So Taguchi and Yukio Tanaka.

2002 BBM Japan National Team #11

2002 BBM Japan National Team #29

2002 BBM Japan National Team #33

2002 BBM Japan National Team #44

2002 BBM Japan National Team# 45

BBM's first ever set for the National Team was a 48 card box set for the Japanese representatives for the 34th Baseball World Cup played in Taiwan in November of 2001.   This set came out in early 2002 and contained a 47 card base set plus either a Yoshinobu Takahashi jersey card or a Yoshinobu Takahashi "non-jersey" card - the "non-jersey" card was nine times as likely to be in the box.  The base set was split up into 28 cards for the manager, players and coaches of the team, two cards for the match results, 10 "Starting Member" cards, four "Home Run" cards (for players who homered in the tournament) and three "Recognized" cards (celebrating the team members who were named to the All Tournament team).  The 24 player roster (the linked page only lists 23 players - it's missing Yuya Andoh for some reason) was made up of 15 NPB players, three corporate league players, five collegiate players and one high school player (Hayato Terahara).  The set contained cards for every player on the roster including the collegiate and high school players.  A number of the collegiate and high school players went on to play in NPB (Terahara, Shohei Tateyama and Yuya Kubo being the big ones) so again this set contains pre-rookie cards of these players.  Oddly enough, none of the three corporate league players ever played in NPB.

2002 BBM 1st Version #416

BBM included 16 of the players from the team in a subset in their 1st Version set in 2002.  The players were the 15 NPB players plus Terahara, who had been drafted and signed by the Hawks since the tournament.

2003 BBM Japan National Team #21

2003 BBM Japan National Team #29

2003 BBM Japan National Team #31

The 2003 Asian Baseball Championship was played in Sapporo in November of 2003.  The Japanese team for this tournament was the first fully professional National Team - there were no collegiate or corporate league (or high school!) players on the team.  The tournament was a qualifier for the 2004 Athens Olympics and Japan dominated it, going 3-0 while defeating China 13-1, Taiwan 9-0 and Korea 2-0.  BBM did a 36 card box set for this team that was released in late 2003.   This included a 32 card base set plus four possible jersey cards.  Like the 2002 set, if you didn't get a jersey card then you got a "non-jersey" card.  The base set included 25 cards for the manager (Shigeo Nagashima), the 21 players and the three coaches, four "Award Winner" cards and three cards of match results.

2004 BBM 1st Version #AJ11

BBM included a 22 card insert set for this team in the 2004 1st Version set.  The sets included all 21 players along with manager Nagashima.

There were no cards issued for the 2004 Japanese Olympic team so the next National Team cards wouldn't be until 2006.

2006 Upper Deck SP Authentic Future Watch #WBC-54

The first World Baseball Classic was held in March of 2006 and Japan defeated Cuba in the finals to win it.  Upper Deck had the rights to produce cards for the tournament and ultimately produced a total of 335 cards over eight different sets.  For the Japanese team itself, Upper Deck produced 56 total cards depicting just 16 of the 29 players on the roster plus manager Sadaharu Oh.  This does not include any memorabilia or autograph cards.  I did a round up of all the Japanese team cards for the 2006 WBC some years ago (which I really should have updated for the Ovation Nation set that I didn't discover until later).

2008 BBM Japan National Team #JPN22

BBM's last National Team set was for the 2008 Olympic team.  It was a 29 card box set that contained a 28 card base set plus one insert card.  I'm pretty sure the insert cards were a parallel issue to the base set - I don't think the set had any memorabilia or autographed cards.  The base set didn't have any subsets - it just contained cards for the manager (Senichi Hoshino), the 24 players and three coaches.

2008 Topps Update WBC Preview #WBC4

Topps won the rights to produce cards for the 2009 World Baseball Classic at some point in 2008 and included a "WBC Preview" insert set in their Update set that was released that fall.  This set contained 25 cards of players who had played in the 2006 tournament.  All the players in the set were part of MLB organizations in 2008, although they hadn't necessarily been in 2006.  There were four Japanese players included the set - Kosuke Fukudome, Akinori Iwamura, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ichiro.

2009 Topps 2 #BCS7

Japan defeated Korea in the finals of the 2009 World Baseball Classic to win back-to-back titles.  Topps ended up producing 306 cards for the tournament over 10 separate sets.  This included 50 cards for the victorious Japanese team representing 21 of the 29 players on the roster.  I'm including in this count the patch card for the team that was included in the eTopps WBC set but not any of the other autographed or memorabilia cards Topps produced that year.  Again I posted a summary of all the cards for Japan some time ago.

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R105

The 2009 WBC also had cards produced for it in Japan by Konami, the only time (so far) that a Japanese card company has been able to produce an official WBC set using the WBC logo.  The Konami WBC Heroes set featured a 253 card base set which represented 253 separate players, by far the most tournament participants ever included in a WBC set.  This included the entire 29 man roster for the Japanese team.  In addition there were also two 12 card insert sets - one for the All Tournament team that included cards of Matsuzaka, Hisashi Iwakuma and Norichika Aoki and the other was entitled "Special Cards" and included Ichiro, Yu Darvish and Shuichi Murata.

2013 Topps Tribute WBC #29

The 2013 World Baseball Classic was disappointing for the Japanese team on two fronts.  The first is that Japan was beat in the semi-finals by Puerto Rico.  The second is that Topps produced only a very small number of baseball cards for the tournament.  Topps only published two WBC related sets that year - a 15 card insert set for their second series which didn't include any cards of Japanese players and a 100 card set called Topps Tribute WBC which included cards of 15 members of the Team Japan roster.  The set also included a number of memorabilia and autographed cards although the Japanese players featured included players from previous WBC rosters (like Iwamura) as well as the 2013 rosters.

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-03

The inaugural Premier 12 was held in November of 2015 and Japan did very well in it up until their semi-final game against Korea when they blew a 3-0 lead in the top of the ninth and ended up losing 4-3.  They crushed Mexico in the bronze medal (i.e. consolation game) 11-1 while Korea defeated the US 8-0 in the title game.  There are no baseball cards that are officially for the Premier 12 but Calbee issued a set in November of 2016 that featured the Japanese National team which had been rebranded as "Samurai Japan" following the 2013 WBC.  This 36 card set featured all the players from the Premier 12 roster as well as the roster of the Samurai Japan team that played a couple friendlies against Taiwan in early 2016 with the exception of Kenta Maeda, who was playing for the Dodgers in MLB during the 2016 season. 

2017 Topps Now WBC #W-35

The 2017 World Baseball Classic had similar results for Samurai Japan in the tournament (they lost to the eventual champion USA in the semi-finals) but slightly better results in the baseball card realm.  Topps produced a total of 115 cards for the 2017 WBC although all but five of those cards were only available as on-line, on-demand cards under their Topps Now and Throwback Thursday lines.  The other five were in the "Paper Prospects" insert set from the 2017 Bowman set so there wasn't even a dedicated WBC insert set in any of the pack-based Topps products that year, at least not for non-memorabilia cards.  Of those 115 cards, 22 of them featured a player from Samurai Japan (including four of those five Bowman "Paper Prospects" cards).  Only 13 players from the roster were represented on those 22 cards although another four players were available on memorabilia cards from various Topps sets that year.  I did a round up for the 2017 WBC cards that was similar to the ones I did for the 2006 and 2009 cards.

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-24

Calbee issued a second Samurai Japan set in November of 2017.  While again this set was not officially a WBC set it did feature almost the entire roster of the team from that tournament.  The only players missing were Norichika Aoki (who spent 2017 in MLB) and Ginjiro Sumitani who was a late addition to the team, replacing an injured Motohiro Shima (who is in the set).  The 36 card set also includes players from the Samurai Japan team that took on Mexico and the Netherlands in November 2016 which conveniently allowed them to include Shohei Ohtani in the set.

2019 Calbee Samuri Japan #SJ-08 (Rei Takahashi)

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan Limited Edition Box Set #M-3

Calbee issued a third Samurai Japan set in fall of 2019.  This 44 card set featured players from the team's roster for games in the fall of 2018 against Taiwan and the MLB All-Stars and in the spring of 2019 against Mexico.  Calbee also released an eight card Limited Edition box set that was only available via mail in redemption that highlighted games Samurai Japan had played between November 2017 and March of 2019.

I'm not sure what to expect card-wise for the upcoming Olympics.  I guess the most likely thing to expect would be another Calbee Samurai Japan set that would include the rosters for both the Olympic team and the Premier 12 roster from last fall although the set wouldn't officially mention either event.  I could also see BBM doing a multi-sport set like their annual "Infinity" set as a tie-in for the Olympics - it'd probably be similar to the Upper Deck set from 2000 although likely smaller.  As always, time will tell.

2019 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

Wrapping up my review of the 2019 releases, here's a summary of everything I know that was released in Japan last year by someone other than BBM, Calbee or Epoch.

Hits was back with three of their "mini colored paper" (or "mini shikishi") team sets.  The featured teams were the Carp, the Hawks and the Baystars.  I'm not positive but I think Hits was also behind three other team sets that were each called something like "Game Used Ball".  These were more traditional card sets with 81 card base sets.  The sets were done for the Baystars, Hawks and Swallows.

Konami was back with a second edition of their Baseball Collection set.  This is a collectible card game - the cards are apparently used in an arcade game.  There's a total of 912 cards - 76 per team. 

There were two team issued sets that were distributed in packs nationwide (as opposed to being issued to team fan clubs).  For I think the seventh straight year the Eagles issued a comprehensive team set.  The Buffaloes also did one.

The only food issue available outside of the ballparks was the fourth edition of Nippon-Ham and BBM's joint "Home Run Sausage" cards for the Fighters.  This was the smallest edition ever as it only had one 76 card series plus a set of 20 rare "We Love Hokkaido" cards. 

The total number of Japanese sets for 2019 was 73 (not including fan club sets and cards given away with meals at ballparks) which is down slightly from last year. 

There were four sets issued by SCC for the KBO in 2019 - the KBO Collection set, the KBO Collection Premium set, the KBO Collection 2 set and the KBO Collection Premium 2 set.  In addition, Dan Skrezyna issued another card from his "Vittum" label - this one was for the foreign KBO players from 2015.

2019 In Review - Calbee

Like it was for BBM and Epoch, 2019 was a pretty much regular year for Calbee.  They issued their flagship set as usual in three separate Series.

Series One came out at its usual time in March.  This set had a base set of 98 cards which broke down into 72 player cards (6 per team), 22 "Title Holder" cards and four checklist cards.  The set also had 34 insert/premium subset cards split between the "Star" (24 cards) and "Legend" (10 cards commemorating players who retired in 2018) sets.  There was also a 12 card Limited Edition box set associated with the set called "Strikeout Leader" that featured pitchers from each of the 12 teams.  The box set was available through some sort of "Lucky Card" redemption.

Series Two was released in June and had an 88 card base set split between 72 player cards (again 6 per team), 12 "Opening Day Starting Pitcher" cards and four checklist cards.  It also included the usual 24 card "Star" insert set and also had a 12 card Limited Edition box set called "Hits Leader" available via the "Lucky Card" redemption.

September saw the release of Series Three.  This also had an 88 card base set that again included 72 player cards that again were split evenly among the 12 teams.  There was also a 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset and the usual four checklist cards.  Once again there was a 24 card "Star" insert set with the set plus a 12 card Limited Edition box set called something like "Control Tower" - it featured the starting catcher for each team and was again available via a "Lucky Card" redemption.

There were a total of 216 player cards for the entire set but 24 players had more than one than one card in the set so there are only 192 players represented in the set.  As is usual for Calbee, there are a number of players who appear in the subsets but don't have regular player cards in the set.  This year that group of players includes Yudai Ohno, Tsuyoshi Wada, Randy Messenger, Daichi Ohsera, Hotaka Yamakawa, Takayuki Kishi, Shota Imanaga and Tomoyuki Sugano.  Ohsera, Yamakawa, Kishi and Sugano actually each appear in multiple subsets.

In addition to their flagship set, Calbee also issued a set for the Samurai Japan team.  This was the third time in the past four years they had issued a Samurai Japan set and at 44 cards this was the largest one ever.  The set contained cards for the players who played against Mexico last March as well as a number of the players who took on the MLB All Stars in November of 2018.  For the first time Calbee issued a Limited Edition box set as a "Lucky Card" redemption with a Samurai Japan set - this was an 8 card set that commemorated all the games that Samurai Japan played from November of 2017 until March of 2019 except for the six games played against the MLB All Stars.

2019 In Review - Epoch

2019 was more of the same for Epoch.  They issued 27 sets this past season, the same number they published in 2018.  Once again their products were split between reasonably priced sets and ultra high end sets.

We'll start with the reasonably priced sets.  For the second straight year Epoch published a 432 card "flagship" set called "NPB".  They also published comprehensive team sets called "Rookies & Stars" for eight NPB teams - repeating sets for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Lions, Swallows, and Tigers and adding one for the Fighters.  For the second straight year they published a box set called "Pacific League Rookies" which features all the non-ikusei 2018 draft picks from the six Pacific League teams.

Notably Epoch did not issue a set for the Japan Women's Baseball League this past year.  They had previously issued sets for the league in 2016 and 2018 which makes me wonder if they are publishing them every other year.

The remaining 17 sets Epoch issued were all expensive high end and ultra high end sets which typically featured a box containing four to eight cards for over 10,000 yen.  Each box is guaranteed to contain at least one autograph card and/or one memorabilia card.

Five of the sets feature only OB players.  Two of these were done in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) - aka the OB Club - "Career Achievements" and "OB Club 25th Anniversary".  The other three were team oriented and celebrated anniversaries - the 40th Anniversary of the Swallows' first Nippon Series Championship, the 50th Anniversary of Lotte buying the Orions and the 85th Anniversary of the founding of the Yomiuri Giants.

They issued combination active/OB player sets under the title "Stars & Legends" for nine teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers (or all the teams they issued "Rookies & Stars" sets for plus the Hawks).  The Baystars and Hawks sets ostensibly were celebrations of the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the team and the 30th Anniversary of the team moving to Fukuoka respectively.

Two of the other sets featured active players.  One of these - the "Eagles Season Achievement" set - should probably be considered a 2018 set as it came out in January and celebrates the Eagles 2018 season.  Epoch did several sets under the "Season Achievement" line the past few years but didn't do any other than the Eagles set this past year.  They also issued a "Pacific League Premier Edition" set featuring just players from the Pacific League teams (obviously) for the fourth straight year.

The last Epoch set (well, last in the order I'm listing them, not last in the order they were published) is a set that was not just ultra high-end but "stratospherically high-end" - the Shohei Ohtani "One And Only" set, boxes of which retailed for 129,600 yen (roughly $1170) and contained four cards including an autographed card AND a memorabilia card.

In addition to their sets, Epoch brought back their on-demand cards called Epoch Now One.  Similar to Topps Now, these cards are available for purchase on-line for three days at a time.  The set grew from 680 cards last year to 766 cards this year.  Like last year, Epoch only issued these cards for a subset of the 12 teams although the addition of the Hawks and Swallows to last years group of the Lions, the Dragons, the Tigers, the Marines, the Giants, the Carp and the Fighters brought the total number of teams to nine.  Only the Baystars, Buffaloes and Eagles did not appear on Epoch One cards.

2019 In Review - BBM

2019 looked a lot like 2018 for BBM.  As they had done in the previous year, they issued 32 total sets.  And as always when I talk about BBM's sets for the year, I'm talking about the ones that have the year on the front of the card - the first sets with a "cover date" of 2019 came out in December 2018 and the final one was published in November 2019.

25 of the 32 sets BBM published were their perennial sets - the "flagship" 1st and 2nd Version sets, the high end Genesis set, the season summary Fusion set, comprehensive team sets for all 12 NPB teams, the ultra high end Glory set, the Rookie Edition (draft pick) set, the "Farewell" set for players who retired in 2018, the Rookie Edition Premium box set, the two cheerleader/dance squad sets ("Hana" and "Mai"), the "Icons" box set (this year's theme was "Teenage Memories"), the "Time Travel 1979" set and the "Infinity" multi-sport set.

As they did in 2018, BBM issued five team box sets this year.  All five sets were labeled "Brilliant".  The teams featured were the Carp,  the Fighters, the Tigers, the Dragons and the Hawks.

The last two sets BBM did this year were historically oriented.  The end of the Heisei Era was commemorated in a multi-sport set (called "Heisei") celebrating the major sporting events of Emperor Akihito's reign.  The 70th Anniversary of the founding of the team that is now the Yokohama DeNA Baystars was the subject of the "Baystars 70th Anniversary" set.