New Release: 2014 BBM Chiba Lotte Marines

In the past couple of weeks, BBM released three more team sets.

 The Marines team set consists of 81 cards - 72 base cards and nine subset cards (including the checklist). The player cards have all of the basic information at the bottom on the front, using team colors as usual. The design is quite boxy, but being at the bottom and fairly small it's unobtrusive. Team colors and the same layout that you always expect is on the back.

 Three of the subset cards are "Newcomers" - rookies and foreigners who are new to the team. These have four lime green borders. The backs summarize the player's career before joining the Marines.

 Skilled Infielders is the five card subset, with red borders that fade to pink. The backs have detailed fielding statistics.

As always, there are nine insert cards in the team set, but BBM split the Marines cards into three sets. They have the same exact layout, except for color changes and different numbering on the back.

 2013 Award Winners are green; there are two of these. The award is listed on the front. Backs are grey and have a lack of, well, anything. As BBM inserts tend to do.

Marines Spirits has two more cards, and uses a red background.

 The large insert set, Golden Rookies, has a gold (yellow) background and is composed of five cards - all rookies, of course.

All three sets are available in a parallel numbered to 200 copies each.

Three relic cards are found in packs: Yoshihisa Naruse, Hideaki Wakui, and a combo with both. As you can see by the above image, patch versions are available. BBM hasn't provided details on serial numbering, but the Naruse patch card is numbered out of 20.

As always, autographs are the most-common hits to be found, but BBM didn't give a checklist. The cards I've seen are numbered to around 60 copies each.

Like the other team sets this year, a promo set of 9 cards for the Marines was also issued, with the red and black boxes switched on the front; these also have big text on the front identifying that they are Limited Edition and are numbered with a "PR" prefix.