2009 World Baseball Classic Roundup - Relics

The posts I've done in the past for the 2009 World Baseball Classic cards available for the Japanese and Korean teams didn't include much detail on the memorabilia cards for the teams that Topps produced that year.  I thought I'd do a quick post to correct that oversight.

Topps included memorabilia cards for the WBC in a number of products in 2009 but only six of them included cards for the Japanese and/or Korean teams - Topps 2, "Bowman Sterling", "Allen & Ginters", "Ticket To Stardom", "Triple Threads" and "Updates & Highlights".  There were only six members of the Japanese team who had memorabilia cards - Shinnosuke Abe, Norichika Aoki, Yu Darvish, Kosuke Fukudome, Ichiro Suzuki and Masahiro Tanaka - while there were seven Korean players with relic cards - Choo Shin-soo, Kim Kwang-hyun, Kim Tae-kyun, Lee Dae-ho, Lee Jae-woo, Lee Jin-young and Ryu Hyun-jin.  Lee Jae-woo and Ryu Hyun-jin do not have any non-memorabilia WBC cards in any of Topps' sets that year although the remaining eleven Japanese and Korean players do.

The Topps 2 set had a handful of WBC relic cards.  The only member of either the Japanese or Korean teams to be included was Lee Jin-young:

#BCR-LJY

The bulk of the WBC relic cards were issued with the "Bowman Sterling" set.  49 players from 15 of the 16 World Baseball Classic teams (everyone but Team USA) had a relic card randomly inserted into packs of the product.  The "base" relic cards were not serially numbered but each one had five numbered parallel versions - "refractor" (numbered to 199), "blue refactor" (to 125), "gold refactor" (to 50), "black refactor" (to 25) and "red refractor" (1-of-1).  There were Bowman Sterling relic cards of five of the six Japanese players (everyone but Masahiro Tanaka) and all seven of the Korean players.  I have cards of eight of the twelve players from the two teams:

#BCR-SA (Blue Refractor)

#BCR-NA

#BCR-YD

#BCR-KF

#BCR-TK

#BCR-DL (Blue Refractor)

#BCR-JL

#BCR-HRR

"Bowman Sterling" also had WBC Patch cards available via a redemption card.  There were 25 total patch cards available which included five Japanese players (Ichiro, Abe, Aoki, Darvish and Tanaka) and two Korean players (Kim Tae-kyun and Lee Dae-ho).  Oddly enough both TradingCardDB.com and COMC list these patch cards as a 2008 issue despite the fact that the back of the cards available on COMC clearly show the cards are from 2009.  Topps did issue some WBC cards in late 2008 - they had a 25 card "WBC Preview" insert set in that year's "Updates And Highlights" set that featured players from the 2006 Classic but these obviously aren't a similar preview issue as Ichiro was the only one of those seven players who played in the 2006 Classic.  As far as I can tell, the patch cards were serially numbered to 65.  I do not have any of these cards.

The 2009 "Allen & Ginters" set had an insert set called "N43 Relics" that included some WBC players.  Each card was serially numbered to 25.  Lee Jin-young, Aoki and Darvish were the only Korean or Japanese players included in this insert set.  I don't have any of these cards.

Topps' "Ticket To Stardom" set had a unique insert set in which each card featured both a piece of game used memorabilia plus a piece of a ticket stub.  It was a 72 card set but only 12 of the cards were WBC related.  Four of these were Japanese players (Abe, Aoki, Darvish and Tanaka) and another four were Korean (Choo, Kim Kwang-hyun, Kim Tae-kyun and Lee Jin-young).  I believe that each card featured part of a ticket stub from the WBC final game between Japan and Korea but I don't know that for sure.  Each card was serially numbered to 90 and there were two parallel versions as well - Gold (numbered to 10) and Red (1-of-1).  I only have the Tanaka card:

#TSP-66

There were a number of serially numbered relic cards for the Japanese and Korean teams included with the "Triple Threads" set, none of which I have any examples of.  There were two relic cards that featured three players - one with Ichiro, Darvish and Aoki and one with Choo, Lee Dae-ho and Lee Jin-young - and a relic card featuring Darvish and Yulieski Gourriel of Cuba (which is somewhat ironic considering the controversy between the two of the them in the 2017 World Series).  Each card is serially numbered to 36 and had five parallel versions - Sepia (numbered to 27), Emerald (to 18), Gold (to 9), Sapphire (to 3) and Platinum (1-of-1).  In addition, four Japanese players (Ichiro, Aoki, Abe and Fukudome) and three Korean players (Choo, Lee Dae-ho and Lee Jin-young) had their own patch cards.  Each had a "Triple Patch" card that was numbered to 9 with a 1-of-1 "Platinum" parallel was well as a "1-of-1" "Dual Patch Logo" card.

Finally Topps' "Updates & Highlights" set included six cards featuring relics from either two or three players from the Japanese and Korean teams.  There are three "WBC Stitches Dual" cards that feature Aoki and Abe; Lee Dae-ho and Lee Jin-young; and Kim Kwang-hyun and Lee Jae-woo respectively.  There are also three "WBC Stitches Triple" cards - one with Fukudome, Tanaka and Aoki; one with Ichiro, Darvish and Abe; and one Choo, Lee Dae-ho and Lee Jin-young.  Each of these cards was serially numbered to 25 and I have none of them.

And before you ask, the Konami WBC Heroes set issued in Japan did not include any memorabilia cards.