I know it was less than two weeks since the last time I did a round up of new release announcements but they've been coming fast and furious. Let's get caught up, shall we?
- Topps is back for their fifth year doing NPB cards. They don't have anything about their NPB set up on their Japanese web site yet (which will usually redirect to their US one when I go there because, you know, why would anyone in the US want to see what's available in the Japanese market) but there was a blurb about it at the Trading Card Journal last week. The blurb doesn't say, but I'm assuming the base set will have 216 cards since that's how big the previous four NPB sets were. There will be four insert sets - "1990 Topps Baseball", "2024 Greatest Hits", "Thunderous Power" and "High Score" - and a bunch of parallels that aren't listed here. Autographed cards from "current players, current MLB players and legends from the past" will be available as well. The promo image of the cards shows that they're using the same general design as Topps' 2025 MLB cards although it's unclear if they bothered to indicate the player's position in the little baseball-diamond-thingy on the bottom right of the card fronts. Or use any pictures taken in 2025. Or included any players who changed teams over the winter. The set will be out on June 6th.
- The second one of BBM's flagship sets - 2nd Version - will be out in late August. The base set follows the pattern of almost all 2nd Version sets since 2015 - 216 player cards (18 for each team), 12 team checklists, 36 "1st Version Update" cards (three for each team), 36 "Cross Ocean" cards (three for each team, numbered in continuation of the same subset in 1st Version) and a currently unspecified number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards. The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are likely short-printed again, so the base set without them will be 300 cards. There's seven different insert sets - "Shining Nova", "Dream Getter", "Team Soul", "Fireworks", "Combined", "Treasure" and "Foil Picturesque". All of these have 12 cards except for "Fireworks" which has 24 and "Treasure" which has 48. I'm not positive but I think "Fireworks", "Combined", "Treasure" and "Foil Picturesque" are all "premium" inserts and are serially numbered. There's the usual plethora of parallels of the player cards along with the "Secret", "Ultra Secret", and "Super Ultra Secret" photo variations. There will also be memorabilia cards and autographed cards - including autographed cards using the designs from BBM's team sets.
- Speaking of BBM's team sets, they've announced the final two "comprehensive" ones for 2025. I will just repeat the general details for the sets that I've said before - each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set. Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet. The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Eminent. There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.
| Release Date | Team | Regular Cards | Subsets | Non-Premium Inserts | Treasure | Esperanza | Eminent | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid July | Hawks | 68 | Popular Poses (3), Young Hawks (4), Milestones (3), Inheritance (3) | Core Players (9), Young People To Watch (3), Veterans (3), Rookies (3) | 24 | 15 | 24 | Memorabilia and Autograph cards |
| Late July | Tigers | 69 | Cleanup Trio (3), Moments Of Awakening (4), Born In Hyogo (6) | Main Players (9), Brightest Hope (3), Starting Out (3), Shigeki Makido (3) | 24 | 15 | 24 | Memorabilia cards for Hiroto Saiki, Teruaki Sato and Kota Inoue, Autograph cards |
- BBM has announced the second of the four box sets that they are doing to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Saitama Seibu Lions. Like the Vol. 1 set, boxes for the Lions 75th Anniversary Series Vol.2 set will contain 36 cards - a 35 card base set plus one "special insert card" which could be either a facsimile or authentic autograph. The base set will include 18 OB players from the 1980's and 1990's and 17 current players (each of the players currently on the Lions' roster will eventually be included in one of the four sets). The set will be out in late June with the third edition expected in July and the final one in September.