2014 BBM Lions Legends

BBM has been quietly releasing sets in its "Legends" series now for quite some time. Each set contains a large number of retired players, generally focusing on a team's dynastic era. In the thirteen season span of 1982-1994, the Lions were the Pacific League's most powerful team. This set focuses on that era.

As NPB Card Guy mentioned, the Lions won 11 PL pennants and the Nippon Series eight times. I'd say that's pretty successful! This is the fourth (of five so far) in the series, and was released in late November.

 The base card design is the same as the other Legends sets. The light blue marble border/background is elegant but not distracting and the photo area is pretty large. The backs feature the usual biographical data, along with statistics for the player while he was with the team and his career; the write-up focuses on their contributions to the team during the era. Cards are numbered in the top right. The cards do have a black border at the bottom which my scanner can't pick up; on the back this contains the copyright information.

A full set has 81 cards; there are no subsets in this issue.  Two 27-card partial parallels of the base set were issued; gold foil signatures are numbered to 100, while a blue foil parallel is numbered to the player's jersey number (from 1 to 47 copies per).

The lone insert in this issue is 80's Best Nine, with nine cards. There is a parallel, serial numbered to 100 copies each, The parallel uses gold foil where the "80's Best Nine" text is.

There's a single autograph set with cards randomly inserted in the packs. There are 31 different cards, most with print runs around 100 copies each. This checklist is not the same as the foil signature set.

I like the look of the Legends sets, and like the Achievement sets it's a good series to continue.