Thursday, May 1, 2008

2008 BBM 1st Version

I got my 2008 BBM 1st Version set in the mail the other day and it's beautiful. For the second straight year, BBM has produced a set of cards with gorgeous full bleed photos and a very subdued design. The set contains 535 regular cards that breaks down the following way:

There are 36 "regular" cards for each team, including the manager. Here's some examples (Hiromitsu Ochiai (#37), Toshimasa Konta (#242), Hiroyasu Tanaka (#201) and Kazumi Saitoh (#304)):





There are 12 team checklist cards. BBM's team checklist cards have had some entertaining pictures on them in recent years and this years are no exception. Here's someone from the Fighters (Suguru Ichikawa maybe?) playing umpire (#530) and a couple of Eagles (Satoshi Nagai and Jose Fernandez) doing...something. Perhaps they're attempting to soar like Eagles? Anyway, it's card #533:



There are 31 cards for statistical leaders, including a card for the Chunichi Dragons, winner's of last years Japan Series. Several players have multiple cards: Yu Darvish, for example, has cards for winning both the MVP and Sawamura awards and for leading the Pacific League in ERA. Here's Alex Ramirez's card for leading the Central League in hits (#445):


There are 24 "2007 Impressive Record" cards. These commemorate significant milestones achieved by players in 2007, although since each team is has two cards in the subset, some of the records and milestones are more impressive than others. I'm not sure what some of these cards commemorate, but I know that there's one for Tuffy Rhodes hitting his 400th home run as well as this one for Yukio Tanaka's 2000th hit (#476):


There's a 24 card subset called "2008 Rookie Of The Year Candidate" (with a little subtitle saying "I compete with rivals for 2008 Rookie Of The Year"). Like the Impressive Record subset, there are two players for each team in the subset, which is a bit silly since some teams don't really have one serious candidate, let alone two. Sho Nakata seemed like a good candidate until he got sent to ni-gun (minor leagues). Here's his card (#501):


Finally, there's a 12 card "Good-bye, Heroes!" subset that commemorates retiring players. (And the 12 cards doesn't mean there's one for each team - there are multiple Swallows, Marines and Eagles represented but no Baystars, Giants or Tigers.) Here's Shinji Sasaoka of the Carp's card (#513):


The hand collated set that I bought doesn't contain any insert cards. It looks like the insert cards feature the Best 9 and Golden Glove winners, which is pretty much standard operating procedure for BBM.

7 comments:

Deanna said...

I actually bought a couple of packs and eh -- I don't like this set as much as last year's, although I give them major props for making it very easy to sort (CL and PL are color-coded).

My first pack I opened had a Chunichi 2007 champs card and a Hiromitsu Ochiai card. I thought it was a sign :)

So far also I have gotten two signed inserts... Takahiro Arai and Kensuke Tanaka. How awesome is that?

Out of curiosity, how much did the hand-collected set cost? I'm wondering how many packs I'm really going to bother buying this year...

NPB Card Guy said...

It ran me around $130. I would bet that you could beat that price in Japan, but you would know better than I would.

That's extremely awesome on the signed inserts. I think I've only ever gotten one - a Kazuhiro Yamakura (catcher from the 1980's) from the Giants 70th Anniversary set a few years back.

I'll agree with you that last year's set was nicer looking, but I still think this was a pretty good design. It beats the hell out of some of the recent sets - 2005 1st, 2004 2nd, etc.

john furmaniak sr said...

Any one looking to sell JAY JAY Furmaniak ( Yokohama Baystars) cards reasonable let me know email (qbss13@aol.com)

John

NPB Card Guy said...

He doesn't have a card in the 1st Version set. He probably has one in the Baystars set. I'd check with Prestige Collectibles to see if they have the single or with YakyuShop to buy a box of cards.

NPB Card Guy said...

D'OH!

Upon further review, he DOES have a card in the 2008 BBM 1st Version set - card #125. That card is up on Ebay.

Sorry for the misinformation. That's what I get for not being thorough when I check something out...

Anonymous said...

Where would one go to look for singles. I purchased two boxes on e-bay, and I would like to finish a set.

NPB Card Guy said...

Try Prestige Collectibles. The link is on the right.