2006 World Baseball Classic Roundup - Relics

The posts I've done in the past on the available cards for the 2006 World Baseball Classic rosters for both the Japanese and Korean teams were a little light on details about the available memorabilia cards.  I've done some research and recently picked up some cards from Sportslots and COMC so I thought I'd do a post just on the memorabilia cards.

Upper Deck had the license to do cards for the 2006 Classic and as far as I can tell they only included relic cards related to the tournament in five of their products that year - Flair Showcase, SPx, Upper Deck, Upper Deck Exquisite and Sweet Spot Update.

There were eleven twelve players from the Japanese team that had memorabilia cards - Akinori Iwamura, Munenori Kawasaki, Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Michihiro Ogasawara, Naoyuki Shimizu, Ichiro Suzuki, Hitoshi Tamura, Koji Uehara, Tsuyoshi Wada and Shunsuke Watanabe.  These are the only WBC cards for Ogasawara and Shimizu - they did not have any cards in any of the non-memorabilia WBC sets Upper Deck did that year.

There are only four players from the Korean team who have relic cards - Hee-Seop Choi, Jong-Beom Lee, Jin-Man Park and Min-Han Son.

The Flair Showcase set had associated set of memorabilia cards called "Showcase Stitches".  Most of these were for MLB players - not MLB players on WBC teams but MLB players on MLB teams - but there were a few for WBC players.  The only player from either Japan or Korea who was in this set was Daisuke Matsuzaka:

There were two sets of memorabilia cards available with the SPx set - "Winning Materials" and "Winning Big Materials".  The "Winning Materials" cards were all jersey cards while I believe the "Winning Big Materials" cards were all patch cards and were all serially numbered.  Eleven of the twelve Japanese players appear in both sets - the only one not in it was Matsuzaka.  Their "Winning Big Materials" cards are all numbered to 30 with the exception of Ichiro whose card is only numbered to 5.  Oddly enough only three of the four Korean players are in the "Winning Materials" set - Choi, Lee and Son - but all four of them are in the "Winning Big Materials" set.  Choi's card is numbered to 32, Lee's is numbered to 20, Park's is numbered to 22 and Son's is numbered to 24.  I have six of the "Winning Materials" cards but none of the "Winning Big Materials" cards:

The 2006 Upper Deck flagship set also had two associated relic sets - "WBC Jersey Collection" and "WBC Patch Collection".  The "WBC Jersey Collection" only included three players from each of the two teams - Nishioka, Wada and Watanabe from Japan and Lee, Park and Son from Korea.  The "WBC Patch Collection" cards were each serially numbered to 8.  All eleven of the Japanese players appeared in this set but only the three Korean players from the Jersey set appeared in this one.  Both sets included 11 of the 12 Japanese players (everyone but Shimizu) and three of the Korean players (Lee, Park and Son).  The patch cards were serially numbered to 8.  I again only have cards from the Jersey cards:

I don't know much about the Upper Deck Exquisite set but I assume from the name it was a high end set.  It had a variety of patch cards for Matsunaka, Matsuzaka and Ichiro, including one that featured all three of them.  I don't know if the cards were serially numbered or not.  None of the other Japanese players nor any of the Korean players were included.  I don't have any of these cards.

Finally Upper Deck's "Sweet Spot Update" set also had two memorabilia sets associated with it.  As with the SPx and flagship sets, one of these featured jersey cards ("Sweet Beginnings Swatches") and the other featured patch cards ("Sweet Beginnings Patches").  Eleven of the twelve Japanese players appeared in both sets (only Matsuzaka was not) but while all four Korean players were in the Swatches set, only Lee, Park and Son were in the Patches set.  I do not know if the Patches cards were serially numbered.  I only have one of the Swatches cards:

5/7/20 UPDATE - it turns out that I can't count.  There were actually 12 Japanese players with relic cards.  I've updated the count and which players appeared in which sets.  And somehow I really messed up the WBC Jersey and Patch cards.