New Release: 2018 Epoch Legends of Yokohama

Let's take a break from all of Epoch's pack-based team sets to look at one of Epoch's recent high-end team sets.

Legends of Yokohama isn't really a "one team" set, but it does follow the same franchise. Yokohama is currently the home of the BayStars, but not terribly long ago they were known as the Whales. It's the same team, but Epoch distinguishes between the two teams in its premium cards in this release.

The base cards are printed on foilboard, with foil highlights on the front. As usual, not too much thought went into design for the base cards, though the color scheme is decent. Unfortunately, the same picture is found on the front and back. While the back does have a career stat line and highlights with the team, I can't help but feel this card is just one tiny step away from being the same as BBM and Epoch's meaningless inserts.

There are 23 base cards in a complete set, and each card has a parallel version #/75. Cards 1-9 are Whales players, while 10-23 are BayStars.

There are 14 premium insert sets with autographs. These are:

• Authentic Signatures - Whales - Vertical (8 cards, #/21 or less)
• kanji signatures; many have inscriptions
• Authentic Signatures - Whales - Horizontal (8 cards, #/31 or less)
• regular signatures; one player has an inscription
• Authentic Signatures - BayStars - Vertical (15 cards, #/21 or less)
• many have kanji signatures and inscriptions; foreigners have regular autographs
• Authentic Signatures - BayStars - Horizontal (15 cards, #/31 or less)
• regular signatures
• Legendary Signatures - Whales - Vertical Gold (12 cards, #/6 or less)
• kanji signatures and/or inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - Whales - Vertical White (13 cards, #/11 or less)
• most have kanji signatures and inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Vertical Gold (13 cards, #/6 or less)
• most have kanji signatures and inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Vertical White (11 cards, #/11 or less)
• most have kanji signatures and inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Vertical Grey (2 cards, #/11 or less)
• kanji signatures and inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - Whales - Horizontal Grey (12 cards, #/16 or less)
• regular signatures; one card has inscription
• Legendary Signatures - Whales - Horizontal Gold (12 cards, #/6 or less)
• regular signatures; four cards have inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Horizontal Grey (11 cards, #/16 or less)
• regular signatures
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Horizontal Gold (13 cards, #/6 or less)
• regular signatures, five have inscriptions
• Legendary Signatures - BayStars - Horizontal White (2 cards, #/18 or less)
• regular signatures

Boxes each contain two autographs and one parallel card, plus three base cards. Given the number of parallels, there are 1725 boxes out there. This is actually a higher number of boxes than Epoch's pack-based team sets, but with only six cards per box here, instead, of 100, there are far fewer cards overall.

One box carries a suggested retail price of 13,000 yen.

The image above of autographed cards is a promotional image from Epoch.