2024 Calbee Series 1 has arrived

 

The 2024 season is finally here!  After watching my Dragons drop their first series against the Swallows in Tokyo I was extremely pleased to see them win their home opener last night against the Giants on a dramatic Sayonara home run by Seiya Hosokawa in the bottom of the 11th.

That good baseball mood carried over into today when I stopped at a convenience store in the train station while on my way to work and found bags of this year's Calbee baseball chips were on sale.  It was the same convenience store that I bought my first bags at last year, they seem to get them earlier than others (I had already struck out at a couple of places).  

I pulled cards of Ryosuke Kikuchi and Kaima Taira.  Design wise the cards are more or less the same as they've been since 1997.  The names are in kanji this year and they use a different way of identifying the team (writing the team name out in the stylized font, which I prefer to last year's little box with the team logo in it).  Photography looks as predictable as ever.  

Backs are also the same as usual.  I like the use of the team logo a bit better on these ones compared to last year but otherwise its the same as always.

The bag cost me 126 Yen.  That is both a price increase and a price decrease depending on what kind of money you express it in.  In Yen it is more than the 116 Yen per bag I paid at the same shop last year.  In dollar terms though its less than what they went for a year ago owing to the collapse of the Yen.  At current exchange rates the bag cost me 83 cents today, but were closer to a dollar last year.

Dave wrote a good post a few days ago noting that the base set contains only 60 cards (5 from each team), which is a continuation of the drop from the usual 72 (6 per team) that happened in last year's Series 2.  Also its not clear if they will do just two series this year like they did last or go back to the usual three.  We'll see.  One positive thing is that they've resumed the Lucky Card promotion which they had dropped from the Series 2 release last year for the first time in decades.  The prize is just a lousy card holder, but its still nice to see that back.

That is about it I guess.  I'm not sure how excited I should be about these.  I'll pick up some bags on the way home and see if I can get me kids into them again this year, which will probably go a long way to determining my own level of interest going forward.  At the moment though I'm quite happy.  The release of Calbee chips in the stores is the Japanese retail environment's way of telling my brain that spring is here and adds to the other signals - cherry blossoms, leaves opening up on trees, ball games on TV.  This is my favorite time of the year by far and I'm going to relish it for a few days.