2023 Topps WBC Stars

The latest Topps offering of World Baseball Classic cards is the WBC Stars set.  This is actually a 60 card insert set distributed with the Topps Series 2 set that came out earlier this month.  So far these are the only WBC cards this year that can be pulled out of a pack.  Each card has five different parallel versions - blue, black (#'d to 299), Gold (#'d to 75), Red (#'d to 10) and Platinum (1 of 1).  I think there are also autographed versions available although I don't know any details about them.

Despite having more cards that the Global Stars set this set has few teams from the tournament represented - just 14 of the 20 teams.  Like the other set, China, Taiwan, Australia and Nicaragua are no-shows along with the Czech Republic and Panama.  There's a player from Colombia though which Global Stars did not have.  Team USA has the most cards with 13, followed by the Dominican Republic (9), Japan and Mexico (7 each), Venezuela (6), Puerto Rico (5) and Korea (3).  Canada, Italy and the Netherlands each have two and Colombia, Cuba, Great Britain and Israel each have just a single card.

All seven of the Japanese players appeared in the Global Stars set although Lars Nootbaar was only in the "Flags Of A Nation" insert set.  Here are all seven Samurai Japan cards:

#WBC-10

#WBC-60

#WBC-54

#WBC-11

#WBC-34

#WBC-56

#WBC-33

Two of the three Korean players appeared in the Global Stars set.  This is the only WBC card for the other one, Tommy Edman.  Here's the three Korean players:

#WBC-46

#WBC-50

#WBC-49

I've got kind of mixed feelings about this set.  I don't like the design much as I feel having the country name in big letters across the middle of the card along with the flag background for the top of the card really gives it a cluttered look.  On the other hand, the set reflects what actually happened at the tournament both in the text on the cards and the player selection (Trea Turner is in this set but not Global Stars because no one predicted he'd hit five home runs during the WBC.  Compare the text on the back of Masataka Yoshida's card from this set to his Global Stars card and you'll see what I mean:

#WBC-33

Global Stars #43

If someone could create a hybrid set with the fronts of the Global Stars cards and the text from the backs of these cards, I think I'd be really happy.  It's more doable than you'd think because there are 37 players who appear in both this set and the Global Stars base set (and it's 38 if you count Lars Nootbaar's Global Stars insert card).

I don't know if Topps is planning any additional WBC related cards this year.  We've already seen 227 cards between the 73 Topps Now cards, the 12 card Topps Now All Tournament Team set, the 12 card Topps Now WBC Champions set, the 70 card (base set plus inserts) Global Stars set and the 60 cards in this set which is over 100 more than we saw for the 2017 WBC.  And that's not even including the on demand 30-ish card Samurai Japan set that was sold by Topps Japan back in April.  It's possible though that Topps might slip some memorabilia cards into some of their products this year so it's probably worth keeping an eye out for them just in case.