New Release: 2017 BBM Yakult Swallows

The first pack-based team set of the year was for the Yakult Swallows, being released in early April. Packs this year have 6 cards, with 20 packs per box. One pack retails for 400 yen, putting box prices at 8000 yen.

 Base cards have a pretty simple design. I always enjoy them, though - they leave lots of room for the photo yet have all the important information on the front. My example is a rookie this time, so you can see the mini biography at the bottom about him being drafted and, well, not playing any pro ball yet.

 The first subset in the base set is titled Aces, and it's exactly what you'd expect. This is the Swallows combo card for the year, so there are only two cards in the set, featuring a total of four pitchers.

 Next is W Triple Three. "W" is often pronounced "double" in Japan, and is used to mean just that - double. So when you see "Wサイズ" that means you're getting a double-size order. Anyway, all three cards in this set are for Tetsuto Yamada, and go together as a three-card puzzle.

 The last subset is titled Full of Hope, and has no apparent meaning, but features players who will hopefully bring the Swallows a championship in the near future (as compared to old fogeys on their way out).

 I grabbed a Swallows checklist too for some reason. Usually BBM slaps some mascots on the card, or a random photo, but the Swallows just get a team logo. You can see the whole checklist, now, though, including the five insert sets.

Speaking of those five insert sets, four of them are BBM's standard inserts - foilboard cards with no real thought put into them.

 First on my list is Seasoned Pro. There are three cards in this set, and a parallel numbered to 50.

 Next is Mainstay. This, too, has a parallel which is numbered out of 50. There are four cards in this set.

 Samurai Spirit has only two players, and is paralleled to 50.

Jump Higher is the biggest insert set, with nine cards. There is a parallel for this set, too, but it's numbered to 90.

There is one final insert set titled Phantom, which appears in all of BBM's team sets this year. These are numbered to only 25 copies each and I don't have a copy of my own yet.

This moves us into autographed cards. As always, BBM includes autographs from pretty much every player in every team set. The Swallows have 68 autographed cards randomly inserted, with print runs of 14-60 copies.

Rookie Autographs appear for 6 players, with print runs of 5-10 copies each.

Two combo autograph cards with print runs of 5 cards.
 
Finally, silver autographed cards (5-10 copies) and a gold 1/1 parallel can be found.

I should mention that BBM's Cross Squall cross-brand insert has autographs that can be found in the team sets; three players from each team will be included with a print run of 15 copies each.