2017 BBM Fusion

BBM Fusion returns as a sort of follow-up to the flagship sets. It's a bit of a mash-up of the best of the year and history.

 Each 400-yen pack has six cards, with 15-pack boxes running 6000 yen.

 There are 126 cards in the base set. Regular cards are #1-102. Nine of those have "Secret" photo variations. The cards focus on different records in NPB baseball, which are mentioned on the front and further described on the back.

 The remainder of the set (#103-126) comprise the Title Holder subset. As you may have guessed from the set's name, this set has the leaders in both leagues in a variety of categories. When two players tied for that statistic, they both ended up on the same card.

 Nine "1st Version Update" cards feature players left out of the flagship sets; most of them are foreigners.

 As with last year, First Pitch extends the 2nd Version set - there are nine cards #FP14 to FP22. There are two parallel signature levels, serial numbered to 100 copies and 50 copies.

While 1st Version Update and First Pitch are both numbered separately from the base set, they are frequently included as a "complete" set. However, especially with the First Pitch, they might be left out.

There are two insert sets found in Fusion. The first is Great Records, a 24-card set focusing on, um, great records. Each team gets two cards in the set. There are two parallels: a Silver Signature #/100 and Gold Signature #/50.

 The second insert is Legendary Players. This 12 card set features one of each team's best players. The sample image above doesn't show it, but these have a nice etched foil background.  This set also has a Silver Foil parallel #/100, and Gold Foil parallel #/50.

 The set is polished off with a few autographed sets. The regular Autographs are numbered to 120 copies or less, and there are 57 subjects included. The 16 Cross Sign cross-brand design autographs are #/40 or less. Finally, two Combo Signatures are serial-numbered to five copies each.

BBM's thematic sets have always been interesting to me, and Fusion is no different. While my Japanese reading abilities are still pretty poor, I can usually figure out what the player is being honored for. In fact, if I knew it was doable, I would go back and find all of the Historic Collection sets BBM issued over the years. I hope to see Fusion again next year, too! (Although they did reuse photographs between the base and autographs. It looks like the insert photos changed, thankfully.)