New Release: 2020 BBM Fusion

The last 2020 set* from BBM was Fusion, a now-annual issue which fuses accomplishments from the prior season with identical, or at least similar, accomplishments in the past. One card highlights an event in 2020, with the following card (or two cards) showing that same event in a previous season. It serves as a good summary of the last season.

*BBM released a set called Glory after Fusion was released, but it has a 2021 "issue year" so it doesn't count.

There are 99 cards in the base set, and all but one have the design seen above. The front shows the date of the highlight, with the text below it explaining the highlight. The next line has the player's name, team, and position, followed by his name in romaji and jersey number. The back has the typical bio stats at the top, with an explanation of the highlight in the middle; the bottom has the player's 2020 and career stats.

Card 99 is the only one with a different design, paying tribute to Hayato Sakamoto's 2000th hit.

There are several inserts to be found in the set. The first two are found at the same rate as regular cards.

As in the past, BBM included a "1st Version Update" set mostly containing traded players plus some new ones. There are 24 cards in this set using the 1st Version design, numbered 601-624 to add to the end of the flagship set.

13 Ceremonial First Pitch cards #FP14-FP26 continue the insert found in 2nd Version. While the 2nd Version cards featured first pitches from prior seasons, the Fusion set has first pitches thrown out in the 2020 season. There are several variations of foil parallels of this set, found serial numbered to 250 (holo), 200 (silver), 100 (gold), 50 (silver holo), and 25 (gold holo) copies.

Title Holder originally was a subset found in the base set, but are now numbered as a separate set. They still appear at the same rate as the regular cards. The 24 cards in this set have 12 Central League and 12 Pacific League leaders in various categories. There are two parallels: silver #/150 and silver holo #/50.

The next two sets are standard BBM inserts, found at a lower rate than the base cards.

Legendary Players features 12 retired players, one from each team. These can be found in silver #/100 and gold /50 parallels.

The Great Record insert set features two players from each team, for a total of 24 cards, reaching various career milestones. These too are found in silver #/100 and gold /50 parallels.

There are two premium insert sets, Phantom (#/25, 12 cards, one per team) and Esperanza (#/50, 24 cards, two per team).

As for autographs, regular autographs can be found for many subjects #/10-90. The cross-set Cross Sign Autographs feature 16 cards using the Cross Blossoms design, serial numbered between 10 and 30 copies each. Finally, nine First Pitch Autographs can be found #/25-55 copies, with a special Foil version #/5.

Kellogg's MLB Japan Cards - A Quick Revisit

This post has been edited and republished after finding some new information. Thanks, NPBCardGuy, for inspiring some additional research.

From 2007 to 2010, Kellogg's cereal in Japan could be found with cards highlighting some of the best active MLB stars. I eventually decided to collect the entire set run of these cards, and that task was completed a couple years ago.

(Edited) The cards were included inside the boxes, one per box. There were chances to win prizes as well. At least, for 2008 and 2010. I haven't been able to confirm 2007 yet.

They were packaged inside little cellophane wrappers, one card per pack. None of the packs I've seen had any kind of marking on them, and probably just served to protect the cards in their display, or allow them to be attached to the cereal if the retailers so desired.

The 2007 set was produced by Upper Deck, had 10 cards, and had this design:

Moving on to the 2008 set, which was again produced by Upper Deck, and again totalling 10 cards: 

Let's skip 2009 for a minute.

In 2010, Topps took over; this final set only had six cards:

Why did Topps issue the 2010 set? If you remember, Upper Deck lost its MLB license after the 2009 season, so Topps took over both the Kellogg's set and the Hideki Matsui Home Run Chronicles set.

What happened in 2009? I'm not sure. Over the past eight years, I've never come across a 2009 Kellogg's card. Searching Google yields no images. Other years pop up in Yahoo Japan Auctions, but no 2009. But I did discover something recently that might be the answer:

 This is a plastic ruler. The measurement at the top is in centimeters, so this is a little under six inches long. It has a lenticular surface which shows four images of Daisuke Matsuzaka's delivery. The Red Sox logo is on the left, Daisuke's name is in Kanji on the right along with the team name and his jersey number, and most importantly, there's a Kellogg's logo on the lower-left.

The back is black on white; Matsuzaka's bio stats are in the box on the left, and MLB statistics for 2007 and 2008 are on the right; this plus the 2009 copyright at the bottom definitely helps identify the year of release.

I found the above image just now, which shows a couple rulers and cards from the 2009 release. The cards, according to the original post, were part of the box (if my translation is accurate). They do appear to be cut from the box.

If you're interested in checklists for the Kellogg's sets, I put them in this 2015 post (opens in new window). The checklists on that page include the 2009 set.

And now that I know what I'm looking for, I can start searching for the cereal box and/or rulers.

This Year's Goals: Short and Sweet

 A new year, a new set of goals. I have no idea what the next 365 days have in store for me, Japan, and the world.

I spent a large part of the past year living away from my apartment, and this year may be more of the same. The Olympics could happen, and I could be attending a few events. I would like to go back home and visit my mother for Christmas, but there are lots of factors at play right now.

But here are my hopes for this rotation of the earth around the sun, at least as far as card collecting goes.

1. Finish some player collections. I'm hoping to complete my Michael Jordan baseball collection, Bartolo Colon, Tony LaRussa, and Tyler Austin for the US, and Alex Ramirez and Motonobu Tanishige for the NPB. Plus, I'd like to add three figures for my player collections; I currently need nine.

2. Complete various collections. Pokemon needs 41 from the new generation, plus about 175 variations. I need around 50 minis to finish that Frankenset, and just a few cards each to complete my relic, alumni, and knuckler mini-collections. Some of those cards are quite rare or costly. Also bundled in here are the MiLB and non-sport singles I need for a couple collections; this goal keeps getting pushed back year after year but perhaps the time is now.

3. Get at least one BBM set and one Calbee set. I'm currently working on the 1995 and 1996 BBM sets, and need five other sets that I could pick up complete. For Calbee, there are six series from 1998 through 2010 that could make this happen, including the entire 2006 set. In addition, I need one more card to finish the 2008 Calbee set: a mascot card that has oddly eluded me.

4. 75 or fewer sets on the US want list. I'm at 84 including last year's sets. Some are very close to completion! And 60 or fewer sets on the Japan want list. I'm currently at 63, so it's not a big jump, but these cards seem really tough to find.

5. Type Collection Inserts to 70%. I'm at about 67% complete on insert cards for my type collection, and getting to 70% requires about 200 cards. I think this can be done with a little focus. A second goal for this collection would be getting parallels to 50%; I again need about 200 cards to make this happen.

6. Create custom sets. I'm already planning to make some cards to fit in my collection where cards don't currently exist. I'd like to make some other custom cards or sets from my travel photos and some other hobbies or themes. Time will be a factor here.

7. This year's to-do list: complete the type collection labeling project I started last year, and properly label my card scans.

That's about it, half the number of goals as I had last year. Some of my goals are somewhat combined, so overall I might have the same number of tasks. Five of seven goals are purchases, since these are things I can do online, no matter where I am. Time to get started on those purchases!