Review: 2015 Yomiuri Giants Game Used Bat Edition

Frontier's first offering of 2015 is another super-limited box set that focuses on the hits. This time, it's bats.

 The base set has only 14 cards, with two different designs. The first half of the set uses an orange running track-shaped border around the photo with all the text at the bottom. The shape is carried over to the back; note that all 14 cards have the same back design.

The second half of the set uses a white, black and orange abstract background, and Frontier calls this a subset. Also of note on the card backs is a picture of the player's bat that was used for the relic cards.

You should not be surprised that bat relics are the big draw here, and there are several. Here is a promotional image showing premium cards in the set:

Two special cards come in addition to the 14 regular cards in the set. Each premium set has a seven-card checklist. They break down as follows:

• foil signature card (parallel of "subset" from base set)
• silver: 4-48 copies per
• gold: 2-24 copies per
• red: 40-50 copies per
• bat relic cards
• Level 1 (horizontal, fire cloud design): regular bat relics
• G: 60 or 120 copies per
• GIANTS: 3 or 5 copies per
• square window: 3-10 copies per
• Level 2 (vertical, base subset card design)
• circle: 24 or 28 copies per
• bat knob: 1 copy per
• Level 3 (horizontal, fire volcano design): bat barrel version
• most players have two cards, while one has three

Based on the print runs, I come up with a total of 1339 sets, which is pretty low. Full sets with two "hits" had an original retail price of 10,800 yen.