OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I don't know how to get the Apollo 5, on the official Yinhe Taobao website it says National Apollo 5 (Export to Japan) is worth $56 AUD

After looking at some review comments I think the Apollo 5 = Nozomi Kateru world Stage

wonder how the new big dipper would be like if they are indeed discontinuing the old one, though ive never played with the rubber before

i heard that a lot of people thought that the new Big Dipper IV was hot garbage, nothing alike to the 1st big dipper

Just found some information that say Big Dipper 2 is for sale in internet only, Big Dipper 3 is for sale in China only and Big Dipper 4 is for sale in overseas only.




I think Big Dipper 1 is the one that is discontinued

I'm out of touch. I haven't looked at an AliExpress ad for table tennis rubber for about nine months or so! Well, here's GH Sport's page on Big Dipper:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2052999653.html

There are 22 options! Original Big Dipper seems to still be available, and there's also BD2 and BD3, as they call them. OBD comes in three sponge hardnesses, while BDs 2 and 3 come in four (but all ONLY come with max sponge thickness). Yinhe was vacillating between using actual sponge hardness numbers of simply calling them "soft", "medium", etc. - at least for the BDs they decided to keep the numbers. I've no idea what the difference is between the three, they all use the same topsheet with the same ITTF number. Then again, maybe the geometries are the same but the rubber compounds may be different. One thing I'd forgotten was that they clip the corners on the sheets - shades of H3. I can see why they do it on H3, but the reason here is a lot less clear (as far as I know there isn't a "National Version" of BD). Since these things cost almost USD20 each I won't be buying any any time soon. I suspect I could test them back to back and not be able to tell the difference.

Don't see BD4 available on AliExpress (or at least, it doesn't appear when you search for it).

Iskandar