There are some things in life that are dependable. The sun will come up tomorrow morning. The tides will go in and go out. Yoshinobu Takahashi will get injured. The Cubs will not win the Series. And BBM will put out a Rookie Edition set that looks like every other Rookie Edition set they've ever done.
It's not necessarily a bad thing that most editions of BBM's Rookie Edition sets look alike. It just limits what I can say about it. I guess BBM has decided that collectors will be interested in the set because of who's in it, not because of what it looks like.
The twelfth edition of BBM's Rookie Edition set (which was released back in February) contains 102 cards. 89 of these cards feature the players taken in
last October's draft. As usual, the cards show the players posing in their NPB jerseys, holding balls or bats or making a "guts" pose. As usual, I'll make the comment that the cards would be much more interesting if they showed the players in their high school, college or industrial league team uniforms. There is also a single checklist card that lists all of the draft picks in the set, but not all the cards in the set. There are also 12 "Then & Now" cards - one for each team. Each card features one of the team's new draft picks along with a veteran player for the team. The veteran player for the team is not necessarily a current player for the team - the Baystars card features Masaji Hiramatsu from when the team was the Taiyo Whales and the Buffaloes card has Yukihiko Yamaoka of the Hankyu Braves. The Eagles card features both Yuki Matsui and Masahiro Tanaka. I was kind of amused by the Fighters card as the draft pick featured (Hiromi Oka) is actually older than the "veteran" player - Shohei Ohtani.
Here's a couple example cards (you can see all of them at
Jambalaya):
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| #001 |
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| #063 |
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| #021 |
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| #096 |
