Time to get caught up on the latest announcement of new sets coming out in the next few months...
- Calbee earlier this week finally officially announced the release of the inexplicably delayed Series Two set. As Calbee told me back in mid-June, Series Two will be "released in limited quantities on August 21st and October 9th". Calbee's news release goes on to say that there will be no Series Three this year so for the second time in seven years, Calbee's issuing their set in only two Series. The base set for Series Two will have 60 "regular" card (5 per team), a 12 card "First Win" subset and four checklist cards. There will also be 24 "Star" insert card and Calbee's Amazon.co.jp will be selling a limited edition 12 card "Team Stealing King" box set. The checklist for all the cards is here. I'm not sure why they are listing two release dates but I know Sean had had issues finding Series One for a few weeks after it was originally released so it may be that August 21st is the "limited quantity" release date and October 9th is when it will be more generally available. I have no idea why Calbee's decided to sabotage their set this year - perhaps Elon Musk bought them?
- I mentioned the last time I did a "New Release" post that I thought Epoch was done with their "Premier Edition" team sets this year. I was not correct as they've announced two more of them. The Fighters set will be out on August 26th and the Buffaloes set will be out on September 24th. The Fighters base set has 41 cards (31 active and 10 OB players) and the Buffaloes base set has 40 cards (37 active and 3 OB players). Both sets will have the same massive amount of insert cards as all the other "Premier Edition" sets (and I'm just going copy-paste this from all the other posts I've done for the earlier sets) - "Regular Printed Signature (Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Gold)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Gold)" (9 cards), "Metal Power (Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Gold)" (18 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram A)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram B)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram C)" (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards), "Gem" (6 cards) and "Black Gem" (6 cards). Both sets have five possible autograph cards available but they aren't the same in each set - the Fighters have "Authentic", "Rookie", "Star", "One Of One" and "Baseball" while the Buffaloes have "Combo" cards rather than "Star".
- The second of BBM's two annual cheerleader/dance squad sets - "Dancing Heroine - Mai" - will be released in late September. Like the earlier "Hana" set, it's an 80 card set featuring cheerleaders from the Hawks, Eagles, Lions, Marines, Fighters, Swallows, Tigers, Giants and Dragons. There are also nine "Two Shot" insert cards and a number of autograph cards. I believe that there's no overlap between the two sets but I don't know that for sure.
- BBM's releasing the ninth in their OB team history sets in late September. The base set for the Lions History 1950-2023 set will have a similar structure to the previous eight sets - 90 cards split between seven "Team History" cards, 71 cards of OB Lions and 12 cards of active Lions players. There will also be three insert sets - 12 "Lions Dynasty" cards, nine "Team Record" and 12 premium "Treasure" cards - and, of course, lots of autograph cards. With this set there's now only three teams who BBM has not done a "History" set - the Baystars, Eagles and Fighters. I don't have any inside information but I'd be willing to bet that they'll do a "Fighters History" set later this year since it's the 20th year the team has been in Hokkaido and next year they'll do an "Eagles History" set since it'll be their 20th season in existence. They might do the Baystars next year also as it'll be their 75th season and it'll have been five years since BBM did their 70th Anniversary set. Of course, BBM could also do a "Kintetsu Buffaloes History 1950-2004" set next year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the team's demise.
- BBM has also announced the 2023 edition of their multi-sport Infinity set which will be out in late October. The size of the set has not been announced but it looks like it will include 28 NPB players including OB players like Sadaharu Oh and Koji Yamamoto and active players like Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Munetaka Murakami. There's also a card of former JWBL player Yu Katoh and independent league player Hiroyuki Takagishi of the Tochigi Golden Braves (who is also a comedian). There are literally dozens of other sports represented in the set including volleyball, pro basketball, rugby, tennis, BMX, wrestling and karate.