A previously unknown 1992 Calbee card was revealed to the public today.  Card #214 was of a late signing American player with the Dragons:


The discoverer of the card, Tommy Flanagan, stated that there was an entire series of Calbee cards featuring some little known Dragons players including Max Dubois, Yoji Nishimura and Uchiyama-kantoku but that the majority of these cards were lost.  "There was a flood, see, yeah, a flood and then I got robbed.  Yeah, robbed.  And me and my wife...Morgan Fairchild...chased after the robbers and when we were catching up with them, they uh...burned the cards to destroy the evidence...yeah, that's what happened...that's the ticket."

There was a big announcement released from Calbee today.  I'll quote from Calbee spokeswoman Eipuriru Furu's statement:

For the last several years, Calbee has been making their subsets more and more mirror subsets and sets from BBM.  For example, last year alone, we did a Title Holder subset that was like their Leader subset and an All Star subset that was like their All Star set.  We also did a subset for the Opening Day starters that was like one they used to do.  This year, we even resorted to featuring the team mascots on the checklist cards, just like they've been doing lately.

We've reached an agreement with BBM to take this trend to its natural conclusion.  Starting in 2014, we will simply issue BBM cards with rounded corners.  We will issue 1st Version cards as our Series One cards, 2nd Version cards as Series Two and whatever they are calling their high end cards next year as Series Three.  And we will be changing our name to BBM-Lite.

Full details can be found here.

Just to prove that I'm not the only one who fancies himself a comedian on April Fool's Day...

In the same vein as the Hideki Matsui home run set comes the Yuki Saitoh pitch set.  Cards in this set will be issued for every pitch Yu-Chan throws.  Each card will show a picture of him throwing the pitch and will contain information about the pitch (type, speed, location, etc), its outcome (ball, strike, hit, out) and situation (batter, umpire, time, weather, etc).  The 1033 cards for his pitches from 2011 will be out tomorrow.  The 110 cards for his Opening Day complete game victory over Seibu will be released next Monday.  Binders will be available for the cards - the cover for the binder will be made from blue handkerchiefs.

Since all the card companies in Japan have been negotiating for the rights to print these cards, Saitoh's agent decided that the only fair thing to do would be for all of them to do it.  So identical sets are being produced by BBM, Calbee, Konami, Owner's League, Kanebo/Topps, and Upper Deck.  Lotte, Tomy, Takara, NST and Yamakatsu are also expected to resume printing cards in order to produce their version of this set.

Details can be found here.

BBM announced today that they have obtained a license from MLB to produce cards for the US market for this season. Photographers from BBM spent the last couple weeks in Florida and Arizona taking pictures and the first set (called MLB 1st Version) will be released next week. The set will contain the full 40 man roster plus the manager and a checlklist card for each team. There also will be a 31 card subset for the statistical leaders from last season and a 60 card subset featuring the top two rookies for each team, for a total of 1351 cards in the set. There will also be insert sets for the Silver Slugger and Gold Glove winners from last year. Plus in continuation of BBM celebrating their 20th anniversary producing cards, they will have a special parallel issue for all the cards that includes a piece of china embedded in them. And there will also be autographed Yuki Saitoh cards, serially numbered to 1988.

Future sets will include MLB 2nd Version, which will include only 25 players per team, a 90 card 1st Version update and a subset featuring first pitch ceremonies from various ballparks (the size of this subset is dependent on how many swimsuit models BBM can arrange to throw out the first pitch) and MLB Touch The Game, a high end set to be printed on thin slices of platinum (they make an incredible sound when you put them in the spokes of your bicycle). There will be box sets for the All Star game and the World Series, a "Rookie Edition" set featuring every player drafted - 2400 cards to be released on August 16. BBM will also release a team set for each team that will feature every player, manager and coach in the team's organization - each set is expected to be roughly 200 cards.

From Topps website today came news today of Topps' first ever set for NPB. It's going to be an 132 card set which will break down as follows:

- 12 Team cards (featuring the manager and the team's 2009 stats and summary)
- 12 Franchise History cards
- 6 Award Winner cards (MVPs and Rookies Of The Year for each league, Sawamura and Shoriki Awards)
- 16 League Leader cards (showing the top three in each league for Batting Average, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, Wins, ERA, Strikeouts and Saves)
- 19 Best 9 cards
- 18 Golden Glove cards
- 2 checklist cards featuring "Classic Combo" shots ("Hugging It Out In Hokkaido" and "BayStar Backhand")
- 45 short printed OB player cards
- 1 card of Mickey Mantle (with a picture of Mantle from the Yankees 1955 tour of Japan)
- 1 "regular" player card (Yu Darvish)

Insert cards include a World Baseball Classic set (12 cards - 10 of Derek Jeter and 1 each of Darvish and Aroldis Chapman) and a Sadaharu Oh home run set (868 cards all showing the same picture of Oh, but with different numbers). Memorabilia cards will include pieces of Tsuyoshi Shinjyo's Darth Vader mask and pieces of the Colonel Sander's statue.

Details are here.