New Release: 2014 BBM Yomiuri Giants 80th Anniversary Cards

BBM enjoys using team's anniversaries as excuses to release sets with lots of retired players. With the NPB celebrating professional baseball's 80th anniversary in 2014, the Giants have also reached their 80th anniversary.

The set starts off with a six-card "History of Giants" subset, outlining the team's annual records, year by year. It's interesting to know that the team went from a record of 2-5 in 1936 to 30-9 in 1938. Note that each year was split into two seasons until 1939.

Cards 7 to 75 are OB (retired) players with orange borders and backs, and 76-90 are active players with blue highlights. These are pretty standard as far as BBM's player cards go, though some very old players show up in the checklist, with some interesting photos, like Mihara's. I'm happy with older grainy photos occasionally like this to get more historic players in the sets. Some of the other photos are amazing.

Cards 91-99 are Team Record cards, showing nine statistical categories and the top 10 Giants. I don't like the background design on these; I wish they had done something similar to the other 80th anniversary sets they issued.

There are three parallels for the base cards (OB and active). Gold foil signatures are numbered to 100 copies, holographic foil signatures 50, and green signatures are limited to 25 copies each.

The twelve-card standard insert set is titled Giants Heroes, with a GH prefix on the card number. The inserts are exactly as you'd expect from BBM - a cropped photo over a background, with no details on why that person is a Giants Hero.

There are two parallels of Giants Heroes: gold (#/200) and holo (#/100).

I count thirty subjects on the OB autograph checklist. These appear to be mostly on-card, though BBM identifies three players with sticker cards. print runs are 30-100 copies each, though most players are near 100 copies.