New Release "Pack" Busting: 2016 Calbee All Stars

NPB Card Guy alerted me to the issuance of an early 2016 set from Calbee. He heard about it from another guy who came across the chips in Hokkaido, and passed the news on to me.

Calbee usually issues three regular series per year with three special limited sets to go with them. We haven't seen what Calbee's doing with the regular 2016 sets yet, but I like this addition. The cards come in a gold bag which advertises that all cards are sparkly. There are 36 cards in the set. And while it's not advertised on the bag, there is a foil signature parallel randomly inserted in packs.

Unlike regular Calbee Chips cards, this pack has only one card. Also, you can see that one bag of chips has a respectable 123 calories.

Here is the card I pulled in my first pack. Chihiro Kaneko of the Buffaloes. You can see the sparkle showing in the photo in the upper left of the card. The photo on the front has a sort of triple-exposure effect going on which is a bit disturbing in the scan but looks a bit better in person. The background is a dark blueish-gray tone, similar to Star Card and other premium inserts over the past 10 years or so.

And the back is pretty standard as well. The card number is in the upper-right, noting the year and carrying an "AS" prefix.

As I mentioned, there are foil signature parallels but I don't know how rare they are. I would guess that they are about as rare as the foil signature cards for the Star Cards sets, as prices on Yahoo Auctions are comparable.

I bought five bags of these chips, but three packs are saved for Fuji so I'll have one more card for you next week!