New Release: 2014 BBM Dancing Heroine Hana (Cheerleaders are Back!)

The dog days of summer are here, and that means one thing: baseball cheerleaders.

Okay, so it means ice cream, amusement parks, high air conditioning electric bills, and sun burns. And actual baseball games. But somehow the Dancing Heroine release seems to be one of the biggest of the year here. No other baseball card set sells faster and at such a high cost than the one with no baseball players in it!

"Hana" is the first of two series of cheerleader cards BBM is releasing this year (they did the same last year). It came out right at the end of June; "Mai" (the second series) comes out at the end of July.

 The base cards look even better this year than the past. Each front has two images in their uniform (costume?). The back usually has the performer in street clothes, plus some basic statistical information and a message. There are 96 cards in this year's set, divided unequally among 10 teams - two teams aren't represented. The translation is somewhat confusing but it appears that the Tigers Girls just aren't in the set, and the Carp doesn't have a dance team. The breakdown goes like this:

• Golden Eagles (Golden Angels) 12 cards
• Lions (Blue Legends) 6 cards
• Marines (M Splash) 12 cards
• Hawks (Honeys) 11 cards
• Buffaloes (Bs Girls) 10 cards
• Fighters (Fighters Girls) 13 cards
• Giants (Team Venus) 8 cards
• Dragons (Chia Dragons?) 8 cards
• BayStars (Diana) 9 cards
• Swallows (Passion) 7 cards

The entire set is paralleled with a holofoil background. It's not serial numbered.

Finally, a ton of autographs are in the product. It seems that most of the autographs have inscriptions of sorts - Asuka's is one of the more complex, with many writing the baseball team or dance team name or adding hearts or other quick scribbles. BBM claims that all 96 subjects have 60 signatures in the set, for a total of 5760 autographs! The Giants and the Lions carry a significant premium over the rest of the teams, with the Honeys being the cheapest in the set.