2013 BBM Classic

Back in June, BBM released a set that I'd been hoping they'd do for a while.  It was called Classic and it was essentially their version of Topps Heritage or Archives - it was a set that re-used earlier card designs in a new set.

There are 109 cards in the base set - 72 cards of current players using the 1991 BBM "flagship" set design (BBM's initial year) and 37 cards of OB players using the 2002 "All Time Heroes" Historic Collection set design.  There were also three insert sets based on previous insert designs - the 1997 Rivals, the 2000 90's Best 9 and the 1999 Above Average sets.  BBM also had players sign old cards and inserted them randomly also.  Since I don't have any of the inserts or autograph cards, I'm just going to be talking about the base set.

The 72 cards of current players breaks down to 6 per team (no big shock there).  I won't really quibble with the player selection as a great player selection isn't really the point of this set.  It pretty much has who you'd expect out of the current players - Masahiro Tanaka, Shinnosuke Abe, Wladimir Balentein, Tony Blanco and Tadahito Iguchi are all here along with the big rookies - Shintaro Fujinami, Yasuhiro Ogawa, Tomoyuki Sugano and Shohei Ohtani.  I think there's four guys still playing in NBP currently who appeared in the original 1991 set - Tomonori Maeda, Motonobu Tanishige, Masahiro Yamamoto and Takeshi Yamasaki - and three of them appear in this set (Yamasaki was left out).

Here's the front and back of both Yamamoto's 1991 card and the one from this set:

1991 BBM #67

2003 BBM Classic #008

1991 BBM #67

2013 BBM Classic #008

You can see that they did a pretty good job matching the design (and the photos have a similar pose).   I think the biggest difference is that the backs of the Classic don't have the team logo watermark and they are the "standard" card size (2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches) rather than the size of the 1991 cards (2 3/8 by 3 5/16 inches).  The "Did you know?" box appears on the back of a number of cards.

Here's some more examples:

#041

#034

#057

#026

The 37 cards for the OB players breaks down to 3 per team with the exception of Orix which has four.  The 2002 All Time Heroes set was the first "Historic Collection" sets - it contained cards of both OB and active players.  Some of the OB players in the BBM Classic set appeared in the original set as active players - I don't think any appeared as an OB player.

Here are the Classic and original cards for Akihiro Yano:

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #101

2013 BBM Classic #077

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #101

2013 BBM Classic #077

So again they matched the design pretty well.  The original set had two different color schemes - blue for active players and yellow for OB players.  Since all these cards are OB players, they all use the yellow.  I thought it was interesting that they changed the "Historic Collection" logo a little - adding the word "Classic".  My only real quibble (and it's minor) was that I always liked how the original cards would list all the team that a player played for above his name on the front of the cards.  The Classic cards only show the team that the player is pictured with.

Not sure what BBM's criteria for picking the OB players was.  Many of the players were active in the last few years and there isn't anyone from earlier than the late 70's.  There's a mixture of stars (Hideki Matsui, Atsuya Furuta, Hiroki Kokubo, Yutaka Ohno, Tomoaki Kanemoto and Kimiyasu Kudoh), much lesser players  (Punch Sato) and everything in between.  This is the first OB set that ignores Kintetsu - there's three players from the Eagles instead.

#100

#080

#106

I really like the idea of this set more than the execution of it.  I like the active players part a lot but I'm kind of indifferent to the OB player section.  I hope they keep doing this, but I'd rather see a 108 card set of all active players using the old design then a dual active/OB set.

All the cards can be seen here.

2013 Calbee Series Two

Got a package in the mail from my Japanese baseball card connection - six sets that have been released over the last three months.  I'll try to do some catchup here...

First up is Calbee's second series for the year.  Like Series One, the set contains 100 cards - 84 player cards, 12 "Exciting Rookie" cards and four checklist cards.  So also like Series One, Series Two only has one subset other than the checklist cards.

Unlike Series One, however, Series Two has 7 player cards per team rather than 6.  As usual, the photography is great and appears to all be from this season (and includes players new to Japan, rookies and players who switched teams last winter, pretty much nullifying one of my complaints about Series One).  Here are some sample cards:

#106

#146

#128

#151

The "Exciting Rookie" subset features the top draft pick for each team.  This is actually kind of a shame as the top draft pick isn't necessarily the best rookie from each team (for instance, Takahiro Norimoto of the Eagles is having a better season then Yudai Mori and Yashuhiro Ogawa of the Swallows is doing better than Taichi Ishiyama - as well as many other pitchers in the CL).  And from taking a look at Series Three which is already out, it appears that the guys in this subset aren't going to have regular player cards at all this season.  So no regular Calbee card for Shohei Otani this year, although this subset card is pretty cool:

D-07 Shohei Ohtani

D-10 Yudai Mori

The checklist cards continue the theme started in Series One for team mascots.  This set includes the mascots for the Eagles, Carp, Hawks and Swallows:

#C-8

I feel like I'm falling into a bit of a rut describing the flagship sets for both Calbee and BBM this season.  This is a Calbee set  - it's pretty much everything you should expect from a Calbee set so if you like Calbee sets, you'll like this one.

As usual, you can check out all the cards over at Jambalaya.

And as before with Series One, Calbee sold some sort of limited edition box set along with Series Two.  It contained 12 cards (one for each team of course) and was entitled "Speed Stars".

RIP BBM All Star Set Part Two

Continuing my review of the until this year perennial All Star box set from BBM...

Some changes were in effect for the eleventh edition of the set in 2001.  The biggest change was that instead of the regular cards having a design that resembled the "flagship" set, they would have a whole new design that was completely unrelated to the "flagship".  The other change is that for the first time since 1995 there would be no oversized cards included with the set.  The All Star rosters grew to 32 for each team so there were 70 "regular" card (when you included the managers and coaches).  BBM also included another five cards in the set - a "Number One Vote Getter" card for Hideki Matsui, a card showing the MVPs for all three of the All Star games from 2000, two cards celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the first All Star game in 1951 (one showing the team from each league), and an odd two-sided card with Hideki Matsui on one side and Alex Cabrera on the other.  This pushed the number of cards in the set to 75, the largest yet.

2001 BBM All Stars #A71

2001 BBM All Stars #A73

2001 BBM All Stars #A42

The big innovation for the 2002 set was that for the first time BBM included random memorabilia cards.  There were rare versions of each of the three 2001 MVP cards - 500 possible Roberto Petagine bat cards, 40 possible Kazuo Matsui autographed cards and 10 possible Norihiro Nakamura autographed cards.  The more common version of each card had a facsimile autograph in for the Matsui and Nakamura cards and a picture of a piece of wood for the Petagine card.  Once again the set featured a card of the "Number One Vote Getter" (Hideki Matsui again).  The rosters dropped to 28 again (and the Pacific League had an extra player this time) so there were 63 "regular" cards to go with the other four for a total of 67 cards in the set.

2002 BBM All Stars #A65 (Not the real bat)

2002 BBM All Stars #A48

The 2003 set also included possible memorabilia cards.  Each set included some form of signed cards for Tuffy Rhodes and Makoto Imaoka.  The "regular" version just had a simple facsimile autograph.  There were also a set of facsimile autograph cards that were serially numbered to 300 for each player.  Lastly, there were 50 cards for each player that were actually signed by the player.  These cards were not the "regular" cards for the two - they weren't even numbered as part of the set.  The team rosters were 28 again but once again one of the teams (the CL this time) had an extra player for some reason.  Since the 2002 All Star series only had two games, there was only two MVP cards along with another "Number One Vote Getter" card (Imaoka).  All this added up to 68 cards in the set.

2003 BBM All Stars #TR

2003 BBM All Stars #A4

The 2004 through 2009 sets are all very similar.  In addition to the "regular" cards (62 in each set except 2007 which had 66), each set had a card for the "Number One Vote Getter" and the MVPs of the two All Star games from the previous year (so each set was 65 cards except 2007 which was 69).  The big innovation in the sets was the addition of a parallel version of the "Fan Selected" cards - 100 serially numbered versions of the card of each of the "Fan Selected" players on the teams - the text on the front of each card was gold instead of just black text. (NOTE - I don't know for sure if the 2009 set has them.)  Starting with the 2008 set a graphic was added to each card indicating if it was the player's first All Star appearance.

Sanyo stopped sponsoring the All Star games after 2006.  Gulliver was the 2007 sponsor after which Mazda picked it up.

Oddly, BBM's logo does not appear on the front of the cards after 2003.

2004 BBM All Stars #A65

2004 BBM All Stars #A41 (Parallel Version)

2005 BBM All Stars #A65

2005 BBM All Stars #A24

2006 BBM All Stars #A63

2006 BBM All Stars #A06 (Parallel Version)

2007 BBM All Stars #A67

2007 BBM All Stars #A50

2008 BBM All Stars #A64

2008 BBM All Stars #A46

2009 BBM All Stars #A65

2009 BBM All Stars #A60

BBM had a big new idea for the 2010 set.  All the sets previously were released in mid to late July, to coincide with the actual All Star games.  The pictures were all just random shots of the players taken during the season.  In 2010, BBM decided that they would delay the release of the set until late August so that they could use pictures taken during the All Star games themselves (kind of like how for the Nippon Series sets they use pictures from the Series itself).  They also decided to have possible memorabilia cards in this set - there's a version of the "Number One Vote Getter" and MVPs cards that contain a piece of a ball.  (Not sure how many of the memorabilia cards were available.)  The more common, non-memorabilia version of the card was labeled a "Non-Ball" card.  The MVPs were the ones from the 2010 All Star games, so the MVPs from the 2009 games were never commemorated in a set.  The set contained 67 cards in all.

2010 BBM All Stars #A67

2004 BBM All Stars #A59

More changes were in store for the 2011 set.  As with 2010, the set featured photos taken during the 2011 All Star games (three for the first time since 2001).  The All Star rosters grew to 32 so there were 70 "regular" cards in the set.  There were cards for the MVPs of the three games but there was no card for the "Number One Vote Getter" for the first time since 1999.  (I don't know if there were any parallel or memorabilia cards available in the sets.)  BBM decided that they didn't have enough icons on the cards so they added new ones to indicate if a player had been voted in via the payer vote or the "+1" vote.

2011 BBM All Stars #A73

2011 BBM All Stars #A66

For what apparently was BBM's final All Star set in 2012, BBM kind of went back to the basics of the first few sets.  The set only contained the 70 player cards - no subsets of the game MVPs, no "Number One Vote Getter" card, no nothing.  BBM indicated the MVP winners by putting yet another icon on the player's card.  Like the 2011 set, I don't know if there were any parallel or memorabilia cards available.

2012 BBM All Star Game #A33

2012 BBM All Star Game #A39

I have mixed feelings about BBM ending this set.  On the one hand, it was an easy set to pick up if you just wanted to get a sense who some of the top players in Japan were.  Since there's only six teams in each league and they play two to three games, there's a lot less chance that a good player is going to get snubbed the way it happens in the US.  On the other hand, there's also a lot of guys who aren't necessarily the top tier who end up making the team as well for the same reason (I'm looking at you Yu-Chan).  And I have to say that some of the designs in the past 12 years have been remarkably ugly.  I think I will miss the set, but if BBM chooses to end the annual Nippon Series set as well, I will miss that set much more.

I want to credit the 7th Edition of Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist And Price Guide" for help with information about the 1991 to 2007 editions of the set.

RIP BBM All Star Set Part One

It's looking more and more like BBM has decided to discontinue the annual All Star box set.  BBM had produced this box set featuring all the players who had made the All Star teams each year they produced cards, starting in 1991.

That first set in 1991 included 62 cards - for each of the two leagues' teams there were 28 cards for the players, a card for the manager (as in MLB the manager is the manager from the previous year's Nippon Series team) and 2 cards for the coaches for the team (two other managers from the league - so half the managers in NBP appear in each set).  This established the pattern for the base cards that would continue for the rest of sets - the only things that would change were the number of player cards (since the number of players on the teams would rise and fall) and additional subsets, inserts and parallels would be added.

The 1991 set also established a pattern that would last 10 year - the card design of the base cards would closely resemble that of the "flagship" set for that year.  There was one thing though that BBM did with the 1991 set that they never did again - they numbered the set as a continuation of the "flagship" set, starting with number 401.

91 BBM All Stars #404

The 1992 set would grow to 66 cards as apparently the number of players on each team went to 30 that year.  The Central League player cards had a gold border while the Pacific League cards had a silver border.

1992 BBM All Star #A49

In 1993, the team size dropped back to 28 although for some reason - probably an injury to someone - the Central League team had 29 players, so the set had 63 cards.  As in 1992, the CL cards had gold borders and the PL had silver.

1993 BBM All Stars #A28

BBM decided to try to punch things up a little in 1994.  Each box contained two of six possible "All Star Electric MVP" insert cards.  The cards included the six players who had been named MVP of the All Star games from 1991 to 1993 (there were actually seven games but Atsuya Furuta was the MVP of two of them).  In addition, BBM added a big graphic on the card indicating that the player was selected to the team via the fan vote - previously there had just been a small line of text on the card.  I believe that this 64 card set (62 regular cards plus 2 inserts) contains the first card where Ichiro Suzuki is only referred to by his first name.

1994 BBM All Stars #A42

1994 BBM All Stars Insert #E3

The 1995 set also included inserts but this time each box only contained one of two possible cards (in addition to the 62 regular cards).  The inserts were the MVPs from the two All Star games in 1994.

1995 BBM All Stars #A14

1995 BBM All Stars Insert #E1

Some more changes were in store for the 1996 set.  Instead of insert cards, BBM included two cards showing the award winners (including the MVP) for each of the 1995 All Star games.  In addition the set also included an oversized (2.5 inch by 4.74 inch) card of Ichiro in honor of him getting the most votes overall).  With the addition of these cards and each team growing to 30 players again, the set grew to 69 cards.

1996 BBM All Stars #A37

1996 BBM All Stars #A68

1996 BBM All Stars #A69

The 1997 set was very similar to the 1996 set.  The subset for the previous year's All Star game award winners was included again, although since there were three games in 1996 there were three cards in the subset.  There was an oversized card (same size as the year before) of Hideki Matsui included labelled "Monster Season" - it's not for getting the most votes as the back of the card shows that Matsui got the fourth most votes - Ichiro got the most again.  Since the team sizes dropped to 28 again, the set actually shrunk a card to 66 cards.

1997 BBM All Stars #A41

1997 BBM All Stars #A63

1997 BBM All Stars #A66

For the 1998 set BBM decided that one oversized card was not enough, so they included three in the set - two for the 1997 All Star MVPs (Kazuo Matsui and Kazuhiro Kiyohara) and one for Kazuhiro Sasaki (like the Hideki Matsui card in 1997, this was not for being the top vote getter).  The oversized cards increased to post card size (3.5 by 5 inches).  Despite the big MVP cards, the set still contains the group Award Winner subset.  With the teams remaining at 28 players, the set contained 67 cards in all.

1998 BBM All Stars #A15

1998 BBM All Stars #A66

The 1999 set is a little busier than the earlier sets.  The teams went back to 30 players so there were 66 "regular" cards of players, coaches and managers.  The 1998 All Star MVPs (Kenshin Kawakami and Hideki Matsui) were commemorated with the postcard sized cards again.  But the group Award cards were not included (and really wouldn't be included ever again).  Instead BBM included a card of Daisuke Matsuzaka labelled "Super Rookie".  There was a parallel version of this card included in roughly a quarter of the boxes - I'm not sure what the nature of the "parallel" was (gold text?  kira?).  There was also a card included in the set that commemorated Yutaka Enatsu's performance in one of the 1971 All Star games (nine consecutive strikeouts in a game that the CL nohit the PL - he also homered in the game) - no idea why this card was included in the set unless it was some sort of "best All Star game moment of the 20th Century" thing.  The set reached a total of 70 cards for the first time.

1999 BBM All Stars #A11

1999 BBM All Stars #A69

1999 BBM All Stars #A67

For the tenth All Star set in 2000, BBM released a set that pretty much set the pattern for the remainder of the sets.  In addition to the 66 "regular" cards (the teams remained at 30 players), there were three cards (regular sized) for the MVPs of the 1999 All Star games along with a single card (also regular sized) for the top vote getter (Ichiro again).  The set did included two more oversized cards for "All Star Game Memorial Scenes" - two top scenes from the previous 10 years.  One of these was Ichiro pitching in one of the 1996 games (he was supposed to pitch to Hideki Matsui but since Katsuya Nomura has no sense of humor, he ended up pitching to Shingo Takatsu instead).  The other was for Atsuya Furuta becoming the first player to ever hit for the cycle in an All Star game in 1992.  The set ended up containing 72 cards.

2000 BBM All Stars #A43

2000 BBM All Stars #A69

2000 BBM All Stars #A71

I'll cover the rest of the sets in another post in the next few days.