2013 & 2017 World Baseball Classic Roundup - Relics

As was the case for the 2006 and 2009 Tournaments, my original posts on the Japanese and Korean team cards for the 2013 and 2017 World Baseball Classics pretty much ignored any memorabilia cards.  Once again I decided to do a post to try to summarize what's out there for the two teams from those two tournaments.

Topps only issued one set in 2013 that had any WBC relics - the high end "Topps Tribute WBC" set.  The base set contained 100 cards - 15 of which were Japanese players and another three were Korean ones.  There were "Prime Patch" cards available for eight members of the 15 Japanese players and two of the three Korean players.  Unlike every other year there were no memorabilia cards available for players who didn't have base set cards.

The "Prime Patch" cards were all serially numbered and there were up nine parallel versions available that had shorted print runs.  Here's a table that summarizes what's out there (according to TradingCardDB.com) - the numbers in each box are the print run for each card:

Player	Team	Prime	Blue	Green	Orange	Gold	Red	Black	Purple	Flag	Logo
Honda, Yuichi	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Imamura, Takeru	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Inaba, Atsunori	Japan	43			25	15	10	5	1		1
Maeda, Kenta	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Matsuda, Nobuhiro	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Ohtonori, Kenji	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Sugiuchi, Toshiya	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Utsumi, Tetsuya	Japan	43		35	25	15	10	5	1		1
Lee, Dae-ho	Korea	67	50	35	25	15	10	5	1	1	1
Seo, Jae-weong	Korea	73	50	35	25	15	10	5	1	1	1

I don't know why Atsunori Inaba didn't have a Green parallel or why none of the Japanese players had a "Flag" parallel.  I suspect that no Japanese player had a Blue parallel because the print run for their "Prime Patch" version was already less than the 50 that all the other Blue parallels are.

I only have one "Prime Patch" card:

#WPP-NM

There were autograph cards of players from the 2013 tournament available in the set but there were no Japanese or Korean players among them.  However there was a seven card "Heroes" autographed insert set that featured players from past tournaments.  There were four Japanese players included - Yu Darvish, Hisashi Iwakuma, Akinori Iwamura and Kenji Johjima.  The Darvish cards were serially numbered to 20 while the Iwakuma cards went to 100 and Iwamura cards went to 200.  I'm not sure about the Johjima cards because they were available on an exchange basis.  The only one of these cards I have is Iwamura:

#TTWH-AI

For 2017 there were four different Topps sets that featured relics of members of the Japanese team.  As far as I can tell there were no relics available for any Korean players.

The first 2017 Topps set with WBC relics was Museum Collection.  This set had two separate WBC "Primary Pieces" relic insert sets - "Patch Relic" and "Quad Relic".  Each of these had three parallel versions.

There were "Patch Relic" cards for Norichika Aoki, Yuki Matsui, Hayato Sakamoto, Seiya Suzuki, Shota Takeda and Kosuke Tanaka.  The "regular" relics were serially numbered to 75 while the "Copper" parallels were numbered to 45, the "Gold" parallels were numbered to 10 and the "Emerald" parallels were numbered to 1.  I have the "Copper" parallels of four of these:

#WBCPR-YM

#WBCPR-SS

#WBCPR-ST

#WBCPR-KT

There were five players with "Quad Relics" - Shintaro Fujinami, Takahiro Norimoto, Tomoyuki Sugano, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and Tetsuya Yamada.  The "regular" relics were numbered to 99 while the "Copper" parallels went to 50, the "Gold" parallels went to 10 and the "Emerald" parallels were "1 of 1".  I have four of the five players - oddly enough three of them are the "Copper" versions:

#WBCQR-SF

#WBCQR-TN

#WBCQR-TS

#WBCQR-TY

The next set with WBC Relics was the Allen & Ginter set.  This set contained a "World Baseball Classic Relic" insert set that featured cards for Fujinami, Norimoto, Sugano, Tsutsugoh and Yamada.  All of the cards were serially numbered to 99.  In addition there were "Framed Mini" versions of the Tsutsugoh and Yamada cards that were numbered to 10.  The only card I have from this set is Tsutsugoh's:

#WBCR-YT

The Triple Threads set also had a "World Baseball Classic Relics" subset.  It contained cards for four Japanese players - Sakamoto, Tanaka, Tsutsugoh and Yamada.  In addition there was a "Combo" card featuring Sakamoto, Tsutsugoh and Yamada.  Each card (including the "Combo") was serially numbered to 36.  There were five different parallel versions of these cards - Silver (numbered to 27), Emerald (numbered to 18), Gold (numbered to 9), Sapphire (numbered to 3) and Ruby (1 of 1).  I have the "regular" version for Sakamoto and the "Combo" card:

#WBCR-HS

#WBCR-SYT

The final 2017 Topps set that had WBC relics was the Diamond Icons set.  This set had a "Single-Player Relic" insert set that included four members of the Japanese team - Norimoto, Sugano, Tsutsugoh and Yamada.  Each card was serially numbered to 10 and there were two parallel versions - Red (numbered to 5) and Gold (1 of 1).  I do not have any of these cards.

To summarize - there were relics available for eleven members of the 2017 Japanese WBC team.  All eleven players have a card in one of the two Museum Collection relic insert sets.  In addition Tsutsugoh and Yamada have relics in all three of the other sets with WBC relics while Norimoto and Sugano are in Allen & Ginter and Diamond Icons, Fujinami is in Allen & Ginter and Sakamoto and Tanaka are in Triple Threads.

These are the only 2017 WBC cards available for Matsui, Suzuki, Takeda and Tanaka.  The other seven players have also have "regular" cards (although the bulk of them were only available as "on-demand" Topps Now cards).