New Release: 2015 BBM Softbank Hawks 10th Anniversary

The first of this year's team anniversary sets features the Hawks, which have been owned by Softbank for 10 years now.

 The base cards have a fairly standard design with the player's name, jersey number, and position at the bottom. Team colors are very visible, and the Hawks' colors go well on cardboard. The base set has 72 player cards with no checklists or subsets. 63 cards have retired players with black bottom borders on the front, while the remaining 9 cards are of active players with yellow bottom borders.

 There are two inserts. One is a non-premium subset-style insert titled Memories of the Decade. The nine cards in the set feature team highlights. Four cards feature on-field events (winning games, essentially) with the other five cards mentioning managers being appointed or retiring, and the creation of the team. This set is separately numbered (with an M prefix) but appears in packs at the same rate as regular cards.

 The second nine-card insert is Best 9 of the Decade. This is a premium insert with a foil background; two photos (full body and close-up) are on the front, with the full body shot cropped and put on a yellow-tinted background on the reverse side. As usual, the cards don't have any stats or text to explain why the players were chosen as one of the Best 9.

There are 28 autographed cards randomly inserted into boxes, with print runs usually around 120 cards each. Some have about 30 copies each. Of the 28 autograph subjects, eight are mascots like Helen Hawk above (print runs of 105 copies each).

It appears that BBM chose not to make any form of parallels for this set. For Hawks fans this will be a nice set, but there isn't much to the set to pique the average collector's interest.

New Release: 2015 BBM Rookie Edition

The annual Rookie Edition set from BBM came out last month, one of just a tiny handful to be released since the new year. Rookie Edition is by far the biggest release of the pre-season.

 The Rookie Edition set has, well, rookies. All the players are basically from the prior year's draft, and have nearly identical upper-body shots of the players tossed into their team's uniform. I like the background design, though, with a lot of curves and angles but not overly busy. The backs copy design elements from the front, with a nice group photo taking up some of the space. The text gives a bit of history on the player. Card numbers are in the upper-right corner, and [RE] appears on the copyright line at the bottom. Regular cards are numbered 1-103.

 There are a couple subsets. Then & Now appears annually and pairs one of the draftees with a historical player. The pairing can be for pretty much any reason. There are 12 cards in this subset, numbered 106-117.

 The two cards in the middle (#104 and 105) are checklists. These picture each player in the set, which is organized by team. Tiny square headshots are used here.

 There are two inserts in the set. The larger one is "Next Generation" and has 12 cards (one per team). The foiled fronts have a fire design at the bottom and the set's name in foil stamping intruding right over the top of the photo. The backs use several design elements from the front; cards are numbered in the lower-right.

The other insert has two cards, one for each of the Rookie of the Year award winners. The design uses the now-standard gold background with gold foil printing for the set name. Backs have 2014 statistics.

There are two parallels of the base set, a gold-foil signature version numbered to 75 and a red-foil signature version numbered to 30. BBM announced 80 or 81 of the players appear in the parallel sets. BBM doesn't mention it on their site but it appears there is also a blue foil signature version numbered to the player's assigned jersey number.

BBM's checklist lists only six autograph subjects featuring retired (OB) players, each with a horizontal and vertical autograph version. Vertical cards have print runs around 75 cards, while horizontal autograph cards have about 25 copies each.

NPB Card Guy has a post on this set too.

1934 Japan Tour Uniform Coming to Auction

I usually don't care much about the big auctions where hundreds of high-dollar items change hands from one wealthy white man to another. Do you want to give me an authentic Babe Ruth-worn jersey from the 1927 season? Sure, I'll take it, only to sell it and buy a whole bunch of other stuff that means something to me.

Jimmie Foxx's jersey from the 1934 MLB tour of Japan is up for auction, and seeing how my baseball interests now include both leagues, this story piqued my interest.

I'm not sure about the "scrubs" on the all-star team, but Gehrig's jersey went for over $500,000, and Ruth's hat went for more than $300,000. They say this jersey could go for over $400,000. This is certainly out of my price range!

On the other hand, having at least a replica of this jersey would be really cool. The Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame has an exhibit about the US tours of Japan. The jersey is being sold through SCP Auctions but they don't have an auction catalog posted yet.