Collecting Spotlight: BBM Women’s Wrestling 2025 Card Set

BBM releases yearly card sets for a variety of sports, and for a great many years I’ve been collecting their joshi wrestling sets. Here we’ll take a look at the details and differences in their 2025 set.

Known as True Heart until 2020 and simply Women’s Wrestling since then, these yearly sets focus on women wrestlers from all across Japan.

Historically most joshi wrestling companies and freelancers participated, with the main exception being World Wonder Ring Stardom. Stardom roster members have not appeared in these sets for over a decade (Stardom has done occasional card based products on their own in the past). Actwres girl’Z also stopped participating a few years back with their classification switch from a wrestling company to an entertainment company.

This year however there seems to be quite a few more wrestlers absent. The T-Hearts roster as well as some notable freelancers are missing from the set. Also Dream Star Fighting Marigold, the new company run by the founder and former owner of Stardom, isn’t included.

BBM did put out a statement talking about production constraints, and that this year scheduling issues led to some regional wrestlers not making it into the set.

However the base set still features 154 wrestlers with an additional 2 tag team and 3 announcer cards. It’s wild that the set is still pretty massive even with the absences, and while having some favorites missing is less than ideal there being around 200 active women’s wrestlers in Japan and the depth it brings to wrestling is a good problem to have.

Keeping with the packing distribution changes made last year, there are 7 cards per pack and 18 packs per box. One of the cards in each pack is one of the 24 “Kira” chase cards, shiny cards which feature a gold facsimile auto of the depicted wrestler.

When there are chase cards in a pack other than the Kira cards, they replace one of the base cards that would otherwise be in the pack. So there are still 7 cards per pack total.

The other chase subsets in the 2025 set are a 9 card foil subset (SP1-SP9), and 13 “secret” chase cards. Secret versions have the same numbering as the base card of whoever is depicted. So for example TJPW’s Mifu Ashida (formerly of Ice Ribbon) is card number 008 in the base set. So her secret card is also numbered 008. Only 13 wrestlers have secret variants so the numbering on them jumps around.

The secret subset this year features “plain clothes” photos of certain wrestlers in everyday attire. The base cards and other subsets of course feature them wearing their wrestling gear.

I’m happy to see the return of the plain clothes cards. The last several years of secret inserts have mostly been alternate poses/backgrounds of the wrestlers in their gear. Those cards are nice themselves, but this subset stands out more and seems more fitting for the alternate/secret subset theme. The selection of wrestlers was a nice mix and they got to show off their personal style and personalities.

In my anecdotal experience this year there tends to be 3 SP foil and 2-3 secret cards per box.

There also is a special, unusual “secret base card” variant showcasing a second set of Yuki Arai’s gear. Her signature cards (more on those to come) are split between the two outfits. She’s the only person with a variant base card. This is an attempt to do something a little different/special within the set, and if it’s well received it may be done in future sets as well.

I’m a little mixed on it personally. I don’t mind having a second card for her, and can get behind the idea of having a couple special base cards that aren’t rare chase cards. That said I’d lose the secret numbering for it. Having them both be card 012 is unnecessary complicated for sorting and collecting (the plain clothes cards are a different matter in how distinct they are). Label them 12A and 12B at least if not just giving them separate number in the set. All that said about a minor technical point, both her base cards look cool. Giving them two different background colors to stand out was a nice touch.

The yearly base set varies in size each year to reflect new wrestlers, retirements, cards for tag teams, and so on. As mentioned are a lot of joshi wrestlers active in Japan and these are not small sets. The 2025 base set consists of 159 cards (plus the Arai variant), which is about a box and a half of base cards (if no duplicates are drawn).

One of the most sought after aspects of these sets are the randomly inserted signature cards autographed by the wrestlers. The last couple years these cards have been designed with colored borders down the sides on an otherwise white background likely to draw attention to the wrestlers and the signatures (and to make them distinct from insert autos). Personally I like the simplicity and the look of them, but some collectors prefer the colorful backgrounds of past sets.

The odds seem to be just a touch lower than last year (last year was itself a bit down from previous years). I’ve generally seen 3 autographs per box, with the secret sig cards I drew being a 4th auto in the box. The boxes I’ve seen with a cheki only had 2 base sig cards with it.

The signature cards are numbered and there are usually 100 each corresponding to the base set for the wrestlers who did autographs. A majority of the wrestlers in the set do signature cards, but not everyone.

Like last year nearly all of the base signature cards this year are on card autographs. The only stickers I’ve noticed so far were for Hikaru Shida, who is based on the US, and on the Magenta tag team dual auto card where proper spacing is paramount. As usual the insert autos use stickers, presumably for design reasons. The stickers are transparent and barely noticeable, even if you know to look for them.

As implied above both the secret and SP foil subsets have associated signature cards. Unlike past years, the foil autos are not short printed compared with the base autos.

Base, secret, and foil autos are all generally /100 now. A couple wrestlers have slightly lower base autos numbers, and Yuki Arai and Haruka Umesaki’s foil autos are a bit lower at /85 and /74 respectively.

The insert autos have fully colored backgrounds, which nicely sets them apart from the white backed secret insert subset those correspond to as well as the white with colored borders designs on the base autos.

There are also a few super rare /5 signature cards featuring Suzume, Mizuki, Yuki Arai, Sareee, and Ram Kaicho.

One of my absolute favorite signature cards ever is in this set. Maika Ozaki is a powerhouse and has a cool tag team entrance pose she does where she lifts her partner (and sometimes partners plural) up onto her shoulder. She’s done it most often with her Gekokujo partner Kyuri and her SPiCEAP partner Tae Honma.

This year SPiCEAP got a dual auto signature card, and BBM oriented it vertically and designed it almost as if it was two stacked up horizontal sig cards so that their pose could be featured. It’s stunning and easily one of the coolest cards they’ve done.

Some of the most distinctive chase items in these sets are chekis: mini polaroids of the wrestlers signed and sometimes decorated by them. There are generally 10 for each wrestler who does them (not everyone in the base set does). A few wrestlers are featured in different outfits and have two distinct /10 versions this year.

These are unique collectibles, and some of the harder hits to pull at roughly 2 per case (1 in 6 boxes). They’re a fun additional and some of the centerpieces of my personal collection.

So that’s it for this year’s BBM Women’s Wrestling release. I wish everyone good luck with their pulls and pickups.

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