2023 Topps Global Stars

In addition to the Topps Now cards, Topps issued another set for the World Baseball Classic back in March.  Well, they had them on sale on line back in March but the physical cards did not get mailed out to the folks that ordered them until the end of May.  The set is called Global Stars and it consists of a 50 card base set and 20 card insert set (Flags Of A Nation).  There were also autographed cards available and the usual gazillion parallels - the base cards had nine different parallels, the inserts had four different ones and the autographed cards had six different ones.

Unlike the Topps Now cards which had card representing 19 of the 20 teams from the tournament (all but China), the Global Stars base set only has cards from 15 teams - China, Taiwan, Australia, Nicaragua and Colombia are all excluded.  Japan and the Dominican Republic have the most cards with ten each, followed by the US (7), Puerto Rico and Venezuela (4 each) and Cuba, Italy, Korea, Mexico and the Netherlands (2 each).  Canada, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Israel and Panama are each represented with a single card.

The ten members of Samurai Japan in the set include two players who were not on any of the Topps Now cards (including the 12 card "WBC Champions" set) - Ryoji Kurabayashi and Hiroto Takahashi.  Here's all ten cards:

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The two Korean players were Kim Ha-seong and Lee Jung-hoo.  I was surprised that Lee did not appear in the Topps Now set since he's going to be posted at the end of the year (especially since he hit .429 in the tournament) but I suppose Korea's quick exit from the tournament again played a role in that.  Here are the two Korean cards:

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The 20 card "Flags Of A Nation" insert set represents 12 countries with the Czech Republic, Mexico and Panama being left out (along the other five left out of the base set).  Japan has the most cards with 5 followed by the Dominican Republic (4) and the US (2).  All the other countries only have one card.  The five Japanese players include one who was not in the base set - Lars Nootbaar.  This is the only player in the insert set who is not in the base set.  Here's four of the five Japanese cards and the one Korean card (I have not gotten the Ohtani Flags card yet):

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Here's what the back of one of the base cards looks like.  The backs of the inserts look pretty much the same with the addition of the country's flag in the upper left corner:

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I like this set for the most part.  I think the design of the base cards is attractive and Topps used a nice variety of photos.  I'm a little less enamored of the "Flags Of A Nation" inserts but they're not bad.  I think the one thing that annoys me about this set is that despite it being published two months after the WBC ended, it doesn't actually reflect any events from the tournament (for example the text on the back of Yoshida's card I showed above doesn't mention his record setting 13 RBIs in the Classic).  In fact, the text on several of the cards implies that the WBC hasn't been played yet - Lee Jung-hoo's insert card says "One of the country's finest hitters will help to turn around his team's recent luck in the tournament and propel them to the later rounds."  Sadly, no, that didn't happen.  I doubt that many of the photos were actually taken during the tournament - most of the ones on the Samurai Japan cards look like they were taken outside and Samurai Japan played no outside games during the Classic - all their games were either in Tokyo Dome or the Marlins' domed ballpark.  My guess is that a bunch of these were from their training camp in Miyazaki.

It's also kind of odd that Kurabayashi was included in the set as he got injured and was replaced by Soichiro Yamazaki without throwing a pitch in the tournament.  Just another indication that the set was decided on and laid out before the WBC even started.

The set was sold in boxes containing 20 cards in all - 16 base set cards, 2 inserts and 2 parallels.  I had originally not planned on buying a box of these back in March but I ultimately relented and bought one.  The expected arrival date for my box was May 30th, the day before I was leaving on a 12 day vacation.  The actual delivery data ended up being June 1st but I wasn't too worried about it because we had someone stopping by the house to feed the cat and I knew she'd bring in any packages.  The downside though was that I didn't know which cards I had until I got back from vacation so I wasn't able to start the process of tracking down cards on Ebay to complete the set until then,  It didn't take me too long to nearly complete the set (just need that Ohtani insert) and it wasn't TOO terribly expensive (although the Ohtani is likely to run me nearly as much as I spent for the rest of the base set).  I may try to make back some of the money I spent by trying to sell the two parallel cards I got in my box - a "black" parallel of Ohtani (unnumbered) and an "aqua blue" one of Julio Urias (#'d to 99):

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