Let's tackle this monster.
BBM's 1st Version came out in early April following the same basic formula that they have been using for the past few years. The base set is 336 cards: 324 player cards and 12 team checklists.
Base cards have a radioactive cloud in one corner. Depending on the photo, I find it distracting due to the bright colors; otherwise, it's not a bad design. The backs are pretty standard.
Let's talk parallels:
- Silver Signature (unnumbered, above left)
- Gold Signature #/100 (above center)
- Holo Signature #/50 (above right)
- Red Signature #/25
- Rookie Parallel #/200 (foilboard)
- Rookie Parallel #/100 (holofoil, seen above)
- Rookie Parallel #/50 (foil stamp)
There are also 12 "secret" and 12 "super secret" photo variation parallels.
As always, the set includes 12 team checklists. Photos on the front appear to come from this year's spring training. Overall, I didn't find the photos to be too appealing compared to prior years.
This year's theme for the cross-brand set is
Cross Blossoms, and the design has an image of cherry blossoms at night with a gigantic full moon in the background. There are two parallels for this set: a
foilboard #/100 version and a 1/1
holofoil verison.
One player from each team can be found in
New Age Stars. The foil design looks better in person. A #/100 parallel with a
lamé finish can be found.
Japonism returns, and has a definite traditional Japanese theme for 12 cards, one per team. Regular inserts have gold, there are also
pink #/100 and
sky blue 1/1 parallels.
3D Cross Blossoms is pretty self-explanatory if you've read everything up to this point. This 12-card set is #/25.
Finally, a 12-card foil autograph version of the Cross Blossoms set titled
Cross Foil Signing rounds out the insert offerings. These are #/15.
Moving on to special cards, there are three
memorabilia cards: M1 and M2 are single-jersey relic cards while M3 is a dual-jersey card.
As always, the cross-brand set has
Cross Signature parallels in single and dual-player versions. There's also a
Special Cross Signature set.
The 10-card
Japonism Signature set gives a horizontal variation on the insert design, leaving space for the sticker autograph.
Finally, four players also have
buyback autographs in the set; each player has 10 autographs spread across differing numbers and quantities of cards.
Not sure how they related to baseball... but the cherry blossom cards are pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteI like how creative they are having to be to keep the Cross sets going. Back when they started out just with the elements, I would not have envisioned "Blossoms".
ReplyDeleteSo what you're saying is that the only cards worth caring about are the autographs of last year's first rounders (Ishikawa and Sasaki in particular).
ReplyDelete