New Release: 2013 BayStars Season Summary

At the end of the year, the Yokohoma BayStars (Baystars?) released a set commemorating special moments during the season.

The fronts have a lot of text - the name of the set at the top; the Baystars logo, the player's jersey number and position (in abbreviated and full-word form) along the side, the team name in very large letters near the bottom, and the player's name across the bottom border.

The backs use the same photo as the front with some details on a season highlight. I'm not sure if the photo matches the event. Some players appear multiple times in the set. Cards 25, 26, and 27 commemorate the 1998 season but use the same design; there are 27 cards in the set.

There are five autograph sets, with one autographed card coming in every box set. The sets are:

• Authentic Signatures (these use the same photos as the regular cards)
• Authentic Dual Signatures (Tony Blanco confirmed)
• 1998 Champions Signatures
• 1998 Champions Dual Signatures (Suzuki/Miura confirmed)
• Historic Moments (Norihiro Nakamura's 2000th hit confirmed)

Details on the autograph subjects are hard to come by; I haven't found a list though it seems there are 30 different cards in total.

Additionally, three promo cards (with PROMO- prefixes on the card numbers) were issued. 

The manufacturer on the back of the box is noted as "Front Runner Trading Cards" but the website is for Frontier International Inc., a Japanese marketing company. 

Frontier is the same company that manufactured the "Rookies & Young Stars" team sets early this year. The "RY"/"FI"/etc logo doesn't appear anywhere on the box or cards of the Season Summary set.

The more I see of Frontier's team sets, the more I like them, but not quite enough to want to have the sets myself. The Season Summary concept is pretty nice, and if I was a team fan or more interested in collecting complete Japanese sets I'd certainly want them.