Ohtani's 2013 Baseball Card Chronology

I've fielded a couple questions in the past few months from folks asking what order Shohei Ohtani's various rookie cards were issued in 2013 so I decided that it might make an interesting post.  And even if it doesn't, it gives me an excuse to show off what I have of those cards considering that unbelievably they're now ten years old.

I've done a couple posts devoted to Ohtani's rookie cards in the past - one that showed a bunch of his base rookie cards and the other that listed all the cards I knew about at the time (including inserts, memorabilia and autographs).  For this post, I'm going to talk mostly about base set cards from BBM and Calbee and which sets came out at what time.  All the sets I'm going to mention are pack-based unless I say otherwise.  

The very first Ohtani base cards were in the 2013 BBM Rookie Edition set which came out in February.  He had three cards in the set - two "regular" cards - a "pitching" version and a "batting" version - that shared the same card number plus a card in the "Now & Then" subset:

2013 BBM Rookie Edition #42

2013 BBM Rookie Edition #42

2013 BBM Rookie Edition #90

The next set to feature him was the "Icons - Hope" set, a 27 card boxed set that was released in mid-March.  The set contained two cards of him - a "regular" card and a card entitled "Michinoku Express" that featured both him and fellow Hanamaki Higashi High School alum Yusei Kikuchi:

2023 BBM Icons - Hope #14

2023 BBM Icons - Hope #26

His 1st Version card, which came out in mid-April, was his first appearance in a "flagship" set:

2013 BBM 1st Version #183

It would be two months before his next cards were released but June would end up being a busy month.  Calbee's Series Two set was released in the middle of the month and included a subset called "Exciting Rookies" which featured all 12 of the first round draft pick from the 2012 draft.  This would be the first card of Ohtani that showed him as both a pitcher and a batter:

2013 Calbee #D-07

A little later in June BBM released their annual "comprehensive" team set for the Fighters which included a whopping 12(!) cards for Ohtani.  There are two "regular" cards - one showing him as a hitter and one showing him as a pitcher - that again share the same number (sort of - there's an 'a' and 'b' appended onto the number) and he appeared in the "Newcomer & Rookie" subset.  The other nine card formed a puzzle entitled the "Two Sword Player".  I only have four of these 12 cards:

2013 BBM Fighters #F02b

2013 BBM Fighters #F83

2013 BBM Fighters #F93

2013 BBM Fighters #F97

The back of each puzzle card shows what the completed puzzle looks like.  The puzzle cards are #F90 to #F98:

BBM also released the first edition of their "Classic" set in late June.  This was a set that featured current players in BBM's 1991 card format - sort of BBM's version of Topps' Heritage set - and one of the players, of course, was Ohtani:

2013 BBM Classic #037

His next cards weren't until mid-August with the release of BBM's 2nd Version set.  He actually had two cards in this set - a "regular" card and a "Cross Wind" subset card:

2013 BBM 2nd Version #554

2013 BBM 2nd Version #CW058

Also in August BBM released a 27 card box set called "Young Fighters" and as he was then 19 years old, Ohtani qualified as a young Fighter.  This is the second card that showed him as both a pitcher and a batter:

2013 BBM Young Fighters #01

Calbee's Series Three set came out in mid-September and included another card of Ohtani.  He appeared in the "All Stars" subset that included all the players voted into the starting lineup for the All Star teams:

2013 Calbee #AS-22

BBM put out "Genesis", their annual high end a week or so later.  It included a card of Ohtani but unfortunately I don't have it.

Right at the end of September BBM released a set that commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Fighters moving to Sapporo from Tokyo.  Called the somewhat awkward name of "10th Season With Hokkaido", the set included two cards of Ohtani - a "regular" card and a "Historic Highlights" subset card:

2013 BBM 10th Season With Hokkaido #02

2013 BBM 10th Season With Hokkaido #89

The final 2013 set that included Ohtani came out in November - the 48 card "Rookie Edition Premium" set.  This set - which I don't have - included two cards of him - a "regular" card and a "Golden Crop" subset card.

In addition to the cards from BBM and Calbee, Ohtani also had a card in the Bandai Owners League 02 set.  I'm not sure what the release date of the set was, however.  (Technically this isn't a base card - it's a short printed "Infinity" card):

2013 Bandai Owners League 02 #074

UPDATE - According to this Beckett article referenced by an anonymous commenter, he had a second Bandai card which showed him as a pitcher.  I don't know which Owners League set the card was in though.  UPDATE to the UPDATE - the pitcher version is also from the Owners League 02 set but it's not part of the "regular" set.  It appears to be from a single card insert set.

I think he also had a Konami card that year but I don't know that for sure. UPDATE - he had TWO Konami cards in 2013.  One was a "regular" card in the Baseball Heroes Vol. 2 set.  The other is apparently not a base card but a "Super Rookie" insert card in the Baseball Heroes Extra Version 1 set.  

Including the Owners League card I think Ohtani had a total of 30 base set cards in 2013.  Not including the Bandai and Konami cards, Ohtani had a total of 29 base cards in 2013.  This post shows 18 of them.

There were a number of promo versions of some of the BBM cards that were released during the season.  I don't want to get too much into them here as there's really nothing I can add to what I've written previously.  The only thing I want to say is that I'm still pretty confident that Ohtani's first appearance on a card was the promo Rookie Edition card that was included with Sports Card Magazine #97 which was published in the last week of January.  There's at least two other promo versions of an Ohtani Rookie Edition card.   One was issued with the Shukan (Weekly) Baseball magazine with a cover date of February 20th which I think (but I could be wrong) was actually published around February 5th.  The other one was part of a 6 card promo set that was distributed to card shops.  The cards were each double sided so they feature the 2012 first round picks for all 12 of the NPB teams.  Ohtani's card has Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants on the other side.  Since I don't know when the card shop promos were issued, it's possible (although I think unlikely) they came out before the Sports Card Magazine card.