Between Niki and the latest issue of SCM, I think I can figure out enough about BBM's upcoming releases for the next month or so to go ahead and do a post about them instead of waiting for BBM to put information up on their website.  So here goes:

- The Tigers team set is the only set I'm going to mention that actually is up on BBM's website.  The base set will have 81 cards - 69 cards for the manager and players, five "Reliable Pitching Staff" cards and seven "Dynamite Row 2015" cards.  There are four insert sets - "Burning Bright" (9 cards), "New Age Builders" (5 cards), "Rescue From Overseas" (4 cards) and "Shintaro Fujinami Special" (6 cards).  There's the usual large number of autograph cards available, including ones with two player signatures and some "1 of 1" versions.  The set will be out June 12th.

- The Marines team set also has 81 cards in its base set.  This breaks down to 71 player cards (including the manager), three three card subsets ("Ageless Wonder", "Real Steal" and "Foreign Impact") and a checklist card.  There are three insert sets - "Fast Lane" (6 cards), "Spring Fever" (3 cards) and "Prime Time" (9 cards) and a similar group of autograph cards that the Tigers set featured, including multiple players and "1 of 1" versions.  The set's release date is June 24th.

- Continuing the trend, the Baystars set also has 81 cards in its base set.  68 of those are player (and manager) cards and the rest are split among 3 subsets plus a checklist card.  I'm not entirely sure what the subsets are, however.  There's a three card subset featuring Yasutomo Kubo, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and Takayuki Kajitani - each card features one of the trio in the foreground with the other two in the background.  There's a six card subset that I think is called "Pitching For Win" - half the cards feature sequential photos of Yasuaki Yamasaki.  I don't know if the entire subset is for him.  The last subset is three cards but I don't know what it is.  There are two nine card insert sets ("Blue Flash" and "Blue Diamond") and the same sort of assortment of autograph cards that the other two sets have (including the dual autograph cards and the "1 of 1" cards).  The set will be released on MayJune 25th, the day after the Marines set.

- This year's edition of BBM's Classic set will be released on June 17th.  The base set features 108 cards - 72 current players and 36 OB players.  The 72 current player cards are in the style of the 1993 BBM set (as expected since last year's was in the 1992 style).  The 36 OB players are in a style very similar to the OB cards in last year's set - same design but different color.  There are three insert sets - a 24 card "All Stars" set that uses the same design as the 2002 Touch The Game set's insert set of the same name.  The other two sets are based on the "Above Average" and "Pitch Perfect" inserts from the 1999 Diamond Heroes set - both sets contain 12 cards.  There's a Tetsuto Yamada game used bat card based on the 2000 Ichiro bat card and a large number of autographed "buy back" cards.

- The first of the two annual team cheerleader cards is due out on June 26th.  Dancing Heroine - Hana has 99 cards in its base set and a number of autograph cards.  There do not appear to be any insert cards.

- I mentioned the other day that SCM 111 had a checklist for the Second Series from Calbee this year.  I assume that the set will be out in mid to late June but I haven't seen a release date.  The set will be released on June 22.  Like Series One, there will be 84 regular player cards (7 per team).  There will be a 12 card subset featuring the managers of each team and four checklist cards, making there an even 100 in the base set.  There's also the standard 24 card "Star" insert set.  There are also two premium items that can only be obtained through redemption cards known as "Lucky" cards - a 12 card box set called "Wins Leaders" (featuring a starting pitcher for each team) and a "magic motion"-style card of Chihiro Kaneko.  The checklist is available on line at Calbee's website.

Takeya Nakamura had a pretty good time against the Tigers this weekend out in Tokorozawa.  In the third inning of yesterday's game, he hit a two run home run to put the Lions up 4-1.  He followed that up the next inning by hitting a grand slam to make it 8-1.  The Lions won by a final of 9-2.  Today with the Lions trailing 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh, he launched a three run home run to put Seibu in the lead for good.  They won 9-4 today.  Nakamura drove in nine runs over the two games, half of all the runs the Lions scored.  His three homers bring his total for the season to 15, three behind Sho Nakata of the Fighters for the Pacific League lead.

I've been meaning to get to a post on the Lions team-issued sets soon so I thought I'd tease it by sharing a 2013 Lions Fan Club card of Nakamura this week:


I want to mention here just how cool the Pacific League TV VOD search is.  You can select a particular player to search for.  The rosters for the teams are all available by pulldown and if you're using an automatic translator in your browser, you'll see the translated names in the pulldowns.  It's not perfect but it makes it a lot easier to find videos on their site.  Now if they'd just make it possible to easily subscribe from outside of Japan....

BBM's latest team anniversary set is for the Hanshin Tigers.  If this sounds familiar to you, it's because this is the third such set for the Tigers (not including the Tigers Legend set).  The first was in 2005 for their 70th Anniversary and the second was in 2010 for their 75th.  You can do the math yourself and figure out that the new set is for the Tigers' 80th Anniversary.

At 81 cards, this edition of the Tigers Anniversary set is smaller than the previous iterations (which were 99 cards).  There are 66 cards for OB players and 15 cards for the 2015 Tigers.  Unlike the previous versions of the set, there are no other subsets in the sets - no team history cards, no team record holders - just cards of current and former Tigers.  As always, the OB players include both retired players and former Tigers still active in both NPB (Takahiro Arai, Kei Igawa) and MLB (Kyuji Fujikawa - active as of the publish date of the set).  The retired players include pretty much everyone you'd expect, especially guys who were in the other two sets like Masayuki Kakefu, Fumio Fujimura, Tadashi Wakabayashi, Akinobu Okada, Minoru Murayama, Masaaki Koyama, Akinobu Mayumi, Koichi Tabuchi, Randy Bass and Tom O'Malley.  There's a handful of guys who make their Tigers Anniversary debut in this set - Gene Bacque and Katsumi Fujimoto - as well as a bunch of recent retirees who were in earlier sets as current Tigers - Tomaki Kanemoto and Shinjiro Hiyama.  The biggest name that's missing is probabaly Yutaka Enatsu, who was in both the earlier sets but for some reason not this one.

#05

#11

#18

#49

#81

If you're sensing a little lack of enthusiasm on my part for this set, you're right.  I'm not very impressed with this set.  On it's own it's not a bad set but it's just pretty much made redundant by the previous two sets.  I hope BBM does not view the Tigers' 85th Anniversary as being noteworthy but we'll see in 2020.

I'm curious to see what BBM does in the next couple years as teams that they've previously done Anniversary sets for hit round number anniversaries again.  The Giants 80th Anniversary set last fall was very nice - partially because the Giants' previous Anniversary set was ten years earlier.  The Dragons' 80th Anniversary is next year and the Hawks' is in 2018.  Both of those teams had a 70th and 75th - does there really need to be an 80th?  I do have hopes for a Fighters 70th Anniversary set this year because that's a team whose history has barely been covered by BBM's OB sets (only the 10 Years In Hokkaido set from 2013).

You can see what you think of the set yourself by checking out the cards over at Jambalaya.

Sports Card Magazine #111 was published yesterday in Japan and somehow a copy made its way to my door by early afternoon today.  Like most issues, this one is a bit of a hit or miss on its usefulness to non-Japanese speakers but I still enjoyed it.

The cover story this issue is for BBM's 25th Anniversary.  There's a three page article that appears to go year by year through BBM's history - I don't know what the text says but each year is illustrated by a significant card, not all of which are baseball.  Here's the list:

1991: Hideo Nomo flagship card
1992: Hiromitsu Ochiai hologram insert
1993: Ichiro Suzuki rookie card
1994: Hiroki Kokubo rookie card
1995: Pro wrestling card (can't read name)
1996: Tomonori Maeda Diamond Heroes Run Producers insert
1997: Hideki Matsui Diamond Heroes Jersey insert
1998: Sumo wrestling card (can't read name)
1999: Tsuyoshi Shinjyo Diamond Heroes Game Used Bat insert
2000: Sadaharu Oh 20th Century Best 9 card
2001: Shigeo Nagashima All Time Heroes card
2002: Michihiro Ogasawara & Kosuke Fukudome Touch The Game Combo Game Used Bat insert
2003: Tsuyoshi Nishioka Rookie Edition Signature Parallel card
2004: Hisashi Iwakuma Buffaloes Jersey insert
2005: Norichika Aoki Touch The Game Game Used Bat insert
2006: Yasuhiro Ichiba, Daisuke Matsuzaka & Satoru Kanemura Touch The Game Buttons insert
2007: Masahiro Tanaka Rookie Edition Premium card
2008: Yuki Saitoh Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version card
2009: Miwa Asao (Beach Volleyball) Real Venus card
2010: Yu Darvish 1st Version Cross Stream card
2011: Riho Sugiura Dancing Heroine card
2012: Hayato Sakamoto Genesis Elite Of Nine insert
2013: Kenta Maeda Classic Jersey insert
2014: Katsuya Nomura Hawks Achievement Autograph insert
2015: Kazuhiro Kiyohara Masters Of Insert Autograph insert

The article also showed the 1991 cards of the three players included in that set that are still active.  Can you guess who they are?  I'll give the answer at the end of the post.

There are full page color ads for the just released or soon to be released team sets for the Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Tigers, Marines and Baystars.  There's a two page ad for this year's Classic set and single page ads for the latest J-League (Soccer), Chic (Sumo) and Dancing Heroine Hana sets.  The checklists for each of these sets appear in the "New Card List" in the "newsprint" section of the magazine.

Their list of "Best Cards" for the issue is:

Best Card Of This Month:  2015 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani autograph card
Best Item Of This Month:  2015 BBM 1st Version

Hot Card Lists
Rookies:
1. 2015 BBM 1st Version Kazuma Okamoto (#186)
2. 2015 BBM 1st Version Takayoshi Noma (#237)
3. 2015 BBM 1st Version Hayato Takagi (#188)
4. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daiki Osama (#075)
5. 2015 BBM 1st Version Shun Lin Haru (#111)
6. 2015 BBM 1st Version Kona Takahashi (#131)
7. 2013 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani (#183)
8. 2015 BBM 1st Version Tomohiro Anaraku (#156)
9. 2015 BBM 1st Version Yasuaki Yamasaki (#291)
10. 1993 BBM Ichiro Suzuki (#239)

Autograph & Memorabilia:
1. 2015 Epoch Tigers Nippon Champions 1985 Randy Bass, Masayuki Kakefu & Akinobu Okada autograph card
2. 2015 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani autograph card
3. 2015 BBM Horizon Sho Nakata & Shohei Ohtani autograph card
4. 2015 BBM Horizon Shohei Ohtani autograph card
5. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Daisuke Matsuzaka autograph card
6. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daisuke Matsuzaka & Hirko Kuroda Combo Jersey card
7. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daisuke Matsuzaka autograph card
8. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Kona Takahashi autograph card
9. 2014-15 Japan National Team Keisuke Honda autograph card
10. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Tomohiro Anaraku autograph card

2015 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size: 372 cards numbered 1-324336, CP01-CP36
Cards Per Team:  28 (team card, manager + 26 players)
Team Card Theme:  Mascots
Number Of Leader Cards:  N/A
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Cross Plasma (36)
Inserts:  Allrounders(12), Lightning(12)
Memorabilia Cards:  Jersey cards for Hiroki Kuroda and Daisuke Matsuzaka (as well as a combination card with both of them).  Each individual jersey card is serially numbered to 200 plus some sort of parallel version numbered to 10.  The dual jersey cards are numbered to 10 with a parallel that's numbered to 3.  There are 29 autographed cards with print runs that vary between 10 and 30.
Parallels:  108 of the regular player cards have parallel versions - I think there are five different versions but I don't know what they are or what they are numbered to.  There is also a parallel to a number of the rookie cards (looks like 13 in the SCM checklist).  There's also parallel versions of the insert cards.  The Cross Plasma cards have two parallels - one that's serially numbered to 100 and the other that's a "1 of 1".
Notable Rookies: Hayato Takagi, Yusuaki Yamasaki, Tomohiro Anraku, Kohei Arihara

I'm trying to decide what's the more significant thing about the 2015 edition of BBM's annual 1st Version set - is it that there are no subsets (besides the ubiquitous cross set subset called Cross Plasma this year) or the fact that this is the smallest 1st Version set ever?  Obviously the former fact is a major factor in the latter fact.

But ok, let's start with the set size.  As 372 cards, this is the smallest 1st Version set ever.  In fact, it's smaller than any of the pre-2002 "flagship" sets as well.  It's almost 200 cards smaller than the 1st Version set from 10 years ago.  The almost complete lack of subsets accounts for the drop in size - last year there were 72 cards in six 12 card subsets.  This year there's just the one 36 card subset - the Cross Plasma set.

As usual, the thing that saves the set is that the cards are very good looking.  BBM has done their usual great job in combining great photos in an attractive, minimalist design.  Here's some examples:

#305

#086

#043

#069

#152

#214

Back of #23 (Ryosuke Kikuchi)

There was one kind of odd thing about the set.  Typically the photos for any particular team are a mix between pictures taken last season and pictures taken in training camp this season.  The training camp pictures are for rookies, new foreign players and players who have changed teams in the off season.  When teams change uniforms in the off season, there's frequently a mismatch of photos - those from the previous season in the old uniform and those from the current season in the new uniform.  For one of the few times I can remember, BBM chose to have all the photos for the Giants and Lions taken at training camp this year due to both teams having changed uniforms.  The most recent time I can remember something similar was when the Baystars were bought by DeNA during the 2011-12 off season - all the Baystars cards in the 2012 1st Version set had the new uniforms (although the Dragons had new uniforms that year as well but still had the hodge podge of old and new uniforms on their cards).  I find that the training camp photos have a little more variety than the photos from last season - although BBM still managed to use the standard shot for Kazuhisa Makita:

#116

#185

Curiously, it looks like the Baystars photos were all taken at training camp as well (with the exception of Yulieski Gurriel who ended up not making it to Japan this year) although I don't think they changed uniforms this year:

#290

One gripe I have about the size of the set is that some notable players end up being left out.  You'd think 27 cards per team would allow BBM to feature most of the regulars but keep in mind that those 27 cards include the manager as well as all the non-ikusei rookies for the team, which could be as few as four (Giants) or as many as nine (Buffaloes, Fighters, Dragons).  Which means some teams only have 17 cards for their regular, established players.  So for example, the following players who are among the leaders on the All Star ballot don't have cards:  Edison Barrios (Hawks), Kensuke Kondo (Fighters), Tatsuhiro Tamura (Marines), Mitsutaka Gotoh (Eagles), Ryoma Matsuda (Tigers), Katsuhiro Nagakawa (Carp), Hirokazu Ibata (Giants), Kenjiro Tanaka (Baystars), Tony Barnette (Swallows), Nobumasa Fukuda (Dragons), Anderson Hernandez (Dragons), Taiki Sekine (Baystars) and Wily Mo Pena (Eagles) (although I will grant you that Pena was a late signing player).  I really wish BBM would go back to 36 cards per team to make sure the set includes more of the everyday players and significant pitchers.

Another thing I wish BBM would do is pick a subject for the team checklists other than the team's mascot.  This is the sixth time in the past seven years that the mascots have been on the 1st Version checklists.  Enough!

#334

The cross set subset has become a staple of BBM's flagship sets the past six seasons.  There was "Cross Stream" in 2010 that was in the 1st and 2nd Version sets as well as Touch The Game and the team sets.  In 2011, there was "Cross Blast" that was just in the team sets.  2012 and 2013 had "Cross Blaze" and "Cross Wind" respectively that were just in the 1st and 2nd Version and Genesis sets.  Last year there was a 36 card "Cosmic Cross" set that was only available as inserts in Sports Card Magazine.  This year the subset is called "Cross Plasma" and I don't know for sure which sets will contain the cards.  The subsets are numbered separately from the sets they are distributed with and in past years have been skip numbered so that you could kinda-sorta get an idea of how the set would be laid out.  For example, in 2013, the first "Cross Wind" cards in the 1st Version set were numbered CW001 to CW003, followed by CW010 to CW012, etc.  This implied that CW004-CW006 would be in 2nd Version and CW007-CW009 would be in Genesis.  This year, however, the Cross Plasma cards are not skip numbered - they are numbered CP01-CP36.  And CP37-CP48 were included in SCM #110.  Since the numbers are only two digits, I wonder if this means that BBM is going to have less than 100 cards total in the subset.  Perhaps the set will only be continued in 2nd Version (the early ads for that set just came out this week and there are 36 "Cross Plasma" cards in it as well).

Anyway, the "Cross Plasma" cards look pretty much like all the "Cross" cards have - a photo of the player super-imposed on some sort of odd background on the front and the original photo on the back:

#CP03

Back of #CP03

The set I bought included one of the insert sets - the 12 card "Allrounders" set.  This set features a position player for each team with a foil finish:

#AR07

As usaul, all the cards (including inserts, some of the parallels and some of the promo cards) can be seen over at Jambalaya.

The last of the recent box sets I got from Ryan a week or so ago were the Achievement sets for the Hawks, Buffaloes and Whales.  The Achievement sets a new series of box sets from BBM that have a retro feel to them.  The sets have a matte finish rather than a glossy finish and the backs of the cards have a look that evokes old (pre-1992) Topps cards.  BBM issued sets for the Hankyu Braves and Nankai Hawks last October and the Kintetsu Buffaloes and Taiyo Whales in December.

I don't have a whole lot to add about these sets that I didn't already say about the Braves set so I'll keep this kind of short.  I do like these sets quite a bit - the photos are nice (even if some of them are black and white) and it's an interesting change of pace from BBM.

The Hawks set is only 29 cards while the other two are 30 cards.  The Hawks and Buffaloes sets feature primarily players from the 1970's and 80's which purely from a player selection standpoint make both sets a bit redundant as this era for both teams been featured in a number of OB team sets over the past several years.  Both sets feature the guys you'd expect (Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Kadota, Yoshinori Hirose, Nobuyuki Kagawa for the Hawks, Keishi Suzuki, Masataka Nashida, Koji Ohta, Charlie Manuel, Ralph Bryant for the Buffaloes).  Here's some sample cards from the two sets:

2014 BBM Hawks Achievement #16 (Katsuya Nomura)

2014 BBM Hawks Achievement #23 (Shinsaku Katahira)

2015 BBM Buffaloes Achievement #20 (Yasanuga Makishi)

2015 BBM Buffaloes Achievement #25 (Charlie Manuel)

The Whales set on the other hand features players from the 1950's through the 1970's as it focuses on the team's time in Kawasaki before they moved a little further south to Yokohama in 1978.  This is an era previously untouched by BBM in any of their OB team sets for the Whales/Baystars franchise.  As a result, there's a number of players included in this set that I don't think have previously had BBM cards - Shigeyuki Takahashi, Katsuji Sakai and Isao Itoh are a couple of the names in this group.  There's a large number of players who are a bit more familiar as well - Akio Saitoh, Masaji Hiramatsu, Akihito and Kazuhiko Kondoh, Makoto Matsubara, Shinichi Etoh, Daisuke Yamashita, Tomio Tashiro and John Sipin.  This is the kind of OB team set I'd like to see BBM do more of.

2015 BBM Whales Achievement #04 (Shigekuni Mashiba)

2015 BBM Whales Achievement #13 (Isao Itoh)

2015 BBM Whales Achievement #30 (Kazuhiko Kondoh)

To see all the cards in the sets, check out Jambalaya's pages for the Hawks, Buffaloes and Whales sets.  Ryan has posts up on all the sets as well (Hawks, Buffaloes and Whales).

Last week Ichiro Suzuki of the Miami Marlins got his 2,874th hit of him MLB career, passing Babe Ruth for 38th place for batters since 1900 (and 42nd for all time).  Ichiro now has 4,154 between NPB and MLB (including his hit in today's game) which is pretty damned impressive even if it isn't a record.

Here's Ichiro's card from the 1999 TV Sports set:


This was a 16 card set that appeared as an uncut sheet in an issue (or issues) of the magazine TV Sports.  Besides Ichrio, the set included Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Tomonori Maeda, Tsuyoshi Shinjyo, Atsuya Furuta, Tomohiro Kuroki, Kenshin Kawakami, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Atsushi Kataoka, Akinori Ohtsuka, Takanori Suzuki and Yoshinobu Takahashi.  Half the guys in the set ended up spending time in the US and a quarter of them are still active this year in either MLB or NPB (Ichiro, Kazuo Matsui, Kenshin Kawakami and Yoshinobu Takahashi).  So far there are only two Hall Of Famers (Sasaki and Furuta) but that will change.

Well, once again I've put off doing a new releases post while waiting for BBM to add information about their upcoming sets onto their website and once again, I've ended up delaying so long that one of the sets that they actually did list on the site has been released.  Here's a quick run-down of what's coming soon from BBM and Epoch:

- The latest two team sets from BBM are for the Fighters and the Dragons.  The Fighters set was actually released yesterday and the Dragons set will be out on Tuesday.  Both sets will have 81 cards in their base sets, 18 insert cards (two nine card sets - Sky Is The Limit and Game Changer - for the Fighters, no details for the Dragons) and the usual assortment of autograph cards.

- BBM hasn't updated their new release website in almost a month, but Niki has information up about the team sets for the Marines, Baystars, Tigers and Lions as well as this year's editions of Dancing Heroine - Hana and Classic.

- Niki also has information up about Epoch's next two sets.  The first is a set celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Carp's "Red Helmet" era - the Carp switched to the red caps similar to the ones they wear today starting in 1975.  It's a bit odd that Epoch is releasing this set since they just did one on this era for the Carp last year and BBM covered similar ground in the Carp Legends set last winter.  This set will be a box set containing 64 cards - 61 in the base set plus three "special" cards - a "shadowbox" card, a parallel card and some sort of autograph or memorabilia card.  The big difference between this set and the one released last year is that this one will contain cards of active players, a first for Epoch's box sets.  There will be 32 cards for "active players, coach, mascot" and 29 cards for OB players.  The set will be out in late June.

The other Epoch set is another collaboration with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association called "National Record Holders".    If I'm reading the Google translations correctly, this looks like Epoch's answer to BBM's extremely high end "Masters Of Insert" set.  Each box will contain five serially numbered cards - two regular cards, one "shadowbox" card and two autographed cards.  There are 24 regular cards available, each of which has two possible "shadowbox" parallels (including a "1 of 1" parallel).  The boxes will run 15,000 yen apiece (around $125) and will be released on July 11.

BBM put out three team based box sets last summer that included both active and OB players for the featured team.  Ryan tracked these down for me and included them with the stuff he sent me last week (and I have neglected to publicly thank Ryan for finding all this stuff for me so let me fix that now - Thanks Ryan!).

The first of these was a set that only contained pitchers for the Carp.  This set was called "Pitchers Spirits Of Carp" and featured 27 cards in the base set - 18 OB pitchers and 9 pitchers from the 2014 roster.  The OB players included retired greats like Ryohei Hasegawa, Manabu Kitabeppu, Yutaka Ohno, Shinji Sasaoka, Yoshiro Sotokoba and the late Tsunemi Tsuda as well as Hiroki Kuroda and Kan Ohtake who were active with other teams in 2014.  The active players include Kenta Maeda, Yusuke Nomura, Bryan Bullington, Kam Mickolio and 2014 rookies Aren Kuri and Daichi Ohsera.  It's kind of an odd little set but I like it.  For more information, check out Jambalaya's gallery for the set and Ryan's post on it.

#03

#21

The name of the next set reminds me of some of the Front Runner sets - "Young Hawks - Futures And Legends".  This is a 36 cards set that features 27 "young" players for the 2014 Hawks and 9 "Legend" players from the 1970's era Nankai Hawks.  The active players include guys who were major contributors to the Hawks Nippon Series Championship last year like Shota Takeda and Yuki Yanagita along with guys who pretty much spent the season in ni-gun.  The backs of the cards show the p;ayer's 2014 ichi-gun stats up until May 18th.  One thing I like is that some of the players are shown wearing retro Nankai Hawks uniforms.  The nine "Legend" players include Katsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Hirose and Hiromitsu Kadota.  I don't know if there's a theme to why these OB players were selected to appear in this set.  Oddly enough there's an OB player included in this set (Sanshiro Nishioka) who is making his first BBM appearance despite BBM having done two Hawks Anniversary sets in the past 10 years.  This is an attractive set but probably my least favorite of these three sets.  Once again, check out Jambalaya and This Card Is Cool for more information.

#08

#36

The final box set of this group was issued as a tie-in with the "Lions Classic" series of games that Seibu put on last season.  BBM has issued a couple sets like this in the past (like this one from 2009) and they typically show active players wearing this year's retro uniform along with OB players from the era that the retro uniform is from.  The retro uniform from 2014 was the all blue uniforms that the Lions wore in the 1980's.  This years set (which is named "Lions Classic - Impact Of Lionsblue") contains 27 cards - nine cards showing members of the 2014 Lions and 18 cards showing 1980's era Lions players.  The previous Lions Classic sets have shown the active players in action but this set actually uses posed shots for them instead.  The nine players selected for the set include Shogo Akiyama, Yusei Kikuchi, Kazuhisa Makita and Ginjiro Sumitani.  The OB players kind of surprisingly don't include the obvious guys - there's no Koji Akiyama, Tsutomu Itoh, Kimiyasu Kudoh or Kazuhiro Kiyohara.  The biggest names are Osamu Higashio, Hiromichi Ishige and Koichi Tabuchi.  My only real gripe with this set is that all the OB players except Higashio appeared in the Lions Legend set that came out last November so it's kind of redundant.  As usual, check out Jambalaya and Ryan's blog for more information.

#09

#22

Continuing with the box sets I got from Ryan last week...

Epoch has issued two new OB box sets in the last six months, neither of which were done in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association.  The first one of these was 46 card set that was issued last November called something like "Giants V9 Glorious Victory".  The set was a tie-in with the Giants 80th Anniversary last season (the third and final set following the Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends set and the BBM Giants 80th Anniversary set) and commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the V9 Giants.  For those who don't know (and even for those who do), "V9 Giants"is the name for the Giants team that won nine straight Nippon Series between 1965 and 1973.

The 46 cards each feature a different player from the Giants' teams of that era.  I haven't done a serious study, but I believe that it's a fairly comprehensive list.  The set includes all the guys you'd expect - Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Isao Shibata, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Masahiko (Masaaki) Mori and Shozo Doi - plus a lot of guys who were very much bit players such as Isao Ohhashi, who got into around 220 games for Yomiuri between 1963 and 1968.  It's probably safe to say that for guys like Ohhashi and Yusaku Akimoto this set may contain their first baseball card ever (the V9 era overlaps the "dead zone" in Japanese baseball card history between the end of the menko era in 1964 and the first Calbee issue in 1973).  This set also contains a card for Masaichi Kaneda, making it the only set of the three Giants 80th Anniversary sets to feature him.

While I like the set quite a bit, I think it could have been a little bit better.  It would have been nice to have had cards for the Giants' manager during this time period (Tetsuharu Kawakami) as well as at least one of the team's coaches - Hall Of Famer Shigeru Makino who has no modern cards.  A subset devoted to each Nippon Series would have been nice as well.  But these are minor quibbles.

Here's some example cards:

#31

#10

#1

As always, Jambalaya has all the cards on line and Ryan did a post on this set a few months back.

The second recent Epoch set came out about a month or two ago.  The Hanshin Tigers are celebrating their 80th Anniversary this season and coincidentally are also celebrating the 30th Anniversary of their sole Nippon Series Championship in 1985.  While BBM is taking care of the former celebration (and I'm hoping to have a post up on that set later this week), Epoch is handing the latter celebration with a 45 card box set entitiled "Tigers Nippon Champions 1985".  43 of the cards in the set feature the players, coaches and manager (Yoshio Yoshida) for the 1985 team.  Like the Giants V9 set, this includes both stars - Randy Bass, Akinobu Okada, Masayuki Kakefu and Akinobu Mayumi - as well as players who's roles were much more minor - like Koichi Hattori who only appeared in 14 games during the 1985 season.  I've only found five players from the team who are not in the set - Rich Gale, Masashi Fujiwara, Hideaki Sato, Eiju Tsukiyama and Shinichi Yamauchi.  (All the missing players except Tsukiyama appeared in BBM's 2013 Tigers Legend set that covered this period of time and ironically Yamauchi appeared in the V9 Giants set!)  The biggest name in the coaches for the team was Hall Of Fame pitcher Tetsuya Yoneda.

The other two cards in the set are a card dedicated to the 3-4-5 hitters in the Tigers lineup that season (Bass, Kakefu and Okada) and a card showing the Tigers' celebration after winning the Series.

Here's some example cards:

#39

#03

#44

One item of interest - Randy Bass is the first Westerner to appear in any of Epoch's box sets since 2009.

Jambalaya has all the cards on line here.

And I think it would be appropriate to mention here that I've added a list of all of Epoch's box sets to the Set Index.

One of the box sets that Ryan found for me cheap in Japan recently was a little team set for the Orix Buffaloes that BBM put out in early 2012.  Called "Pedigree", it has three subsets that each show Orix players (and manager Akinobu Okada) in a different uniform - the regular uniforms (both home and away) for Orix, Hankyu Brave retro uniforms and Kintetsu Buffalo retro uniforms.  I'm assuming all the photos are from the 2011 season.

Here's the Okada cards:

#01

#02

#03

Christmas came early at my house this year - yesterday I received both a box full of goodies from Ryan and a box with my latest Yahoo! Japan Auction wins from kuboTEN.  So I'll try to start blogging a little bit more than I have the last few weeks to try to cover a bunch of the new stuff.

I thought I'd start out with a couple of Front Runner Trading Cards sets from last year that Ryan picked up for me.  But before I do, I want to mention that I added a spreadsheet listing all the Front Runner box sets to the Set Index.

The first of the sets is the Giants Stars & Legends set.  This was the first set that Front Runner has done with the Giants - their previous sets had only been for the Carp, Lions, Buffaloes and Baystars.  This set was also a tie-in for the Giants 80th Anniversary last year.

The base set contains 30 cards (the largest Front Runner base set so far).  There are 12 cards for the "Stars" - the 2014 Giants players (and manager Tatsunori Hara) - and 18 cards for the "Legends" - retired Giants players.  The "Stars" include pretty much who you'd expect - Shinnosuke Abe, Hayato Sakamoto, Shuichi Murata, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hisayoshi Chono for example.  The "Legends" are players from the 60's through the 90's - guys like Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Isao Shibata, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Isao Harimoto, Suguru Egawa, Hiromi Makihara and Masumi Kuwata.  I'm not sure what Front Runner's criteria for picking the retired players for this set was (other than could they still sign an autograph) so it's hard to say if anyone should have been included but wasn't.

The front of each card shows the picture of the player in front of a tinted background - blue for the current players and gold for the retired players.  The back of the card shows the photo with it's original un-tinted background.  Most of the photos are in color but there's a couple in black and white:

#14

Back of #14

#1

#2

#20

It's not a bad little set.  Front Runner was able to attract enough "Legends" (including the two biggest ones in Oh and Nagashima) to make the set worthy of the name - I felt that their 2013 Carp Stars & Legends set that didn't have either Koji Yamamoto or Sachio Kinugasa in it was really not worthy of the name.  My only real complaint with the set itself is that the player's name is very difficult to read on some of the cards.

The big issue with this set though really has nothing to do with this set.  It's that the BBM Giants 80th Anniversary set that came out a few months later has pretty much everything that this set has plus more.

Ryan did a post on this set when it came out and all the cards can be seen here.

The other Front Runner set I got yesterday was the Carp Season Summary set.  In 2013, Front Runner did three Season Summary sets (for the Carp, Buffaloes and Baystars) which were among my favorites of their sets.  The Carp one was the only Season Summary set for 2014 and while I still like it, it's not as good as the 2013 versions.

The 2013 sets were an attempt to actual chronicle the season.  The backs of most of the player cards referenced the events of a particular game during the season.  Since a player could have have had more than one good game, some of the players had multiple cards in the sets (for example Kenta Maeda appeared four times in the Carp set).  This set only has one card for each of the 24 players included in the set and the backs of the cards don't carry any details about any particular games.

The cards themselves are fairly attractive.  The set contains most of the big names for the Carp - Kenta Maeda, Shota Dohbayashi, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Masato Akamatsu, Bryan Bullington, Kila Ka'Aihue and Brad Eldred.  Here are some examples:

#08

Back of #08

#07

#22

The top borders were cut a bit tight by my scanner.

Ryan did a post about this set a few months back and Jambalaya has all the cards on-line.