There were eleven different World Baseball Classic "things" last year, where "things" can be a set, an insert set or a subset. Ten of these were issued by Topps while the other was from BBM. Two of them were exclusively issued in Japan while the others were US based. Four of them ONLY featured members of Samurai Japan.
The "things" are:
Topps Now World Baseball Classic (73 cards)
Topps Now All Tournament Team (12 cards)
Topps Now Samurai Japan (12 cards)
Topps Samurai Japan Team Set (33 cards)
Topps Global Stars (70 cards - 50 regular + 20 "Flags Of A Nation")
Topps 2 WBC Stars (60 card insert set)
Topps Finest "World's Finest" (25 card insert set)
Bowman Chrome "WBC Flag" (100 card serially numbered insert)
BBM Infinity (11 card "Samurai Japan subset")
Topps Japan Edition Samurai Japan (25 card insert set)
Topps World Baseball Classic (100 cards)
You can nitpick my decision to include the "Flags Of A Nation" inserts from the Global Stars set but not the various inserts from the World Baseball Classic set but it feels right to me - I'm not convinced the "Flags" were any scarcer than the regular cards from that set. You might also argue that the eleven Samurai Japan cards in the BBM Infinity set shouldn't count - feel free to ignore them if you want. I'm also not including any memorabilia or autographed cards in the count.
The total number of cards is 521 which I believe is the second most ever (there were 583 cards for the 2009 Classic which were split between the 306 cards that Topps did and the 277 cards - 253 base and 24 insert - in Konami's set).
142 of those cards were for Samurai Japan. Here's a breakdown of all the Samurai Japan cards per player and set:
| Name | Topps Now | Topps Now All Tournament Team | Topps Now Samurai Japan | Topps Samurai Japan | Global Stars | WBC Stars | Finest | Bowman Chrome | BBM Infinity | Topps Japan Edition WBC team | Topps WBC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Darvish, Yu | 15 | 10 | 3 | 35 | 10 | 44 | 15 | 74 | |||
| Genda, Sosuke | 6 | 8 | 8 | ||||||||
| Imanaga, Shota | 12 | 29 | 20 | ||||||||
| Itoh, Hiromi | 20 | 10 | |||||||||
| Kai, Takuya | 14 | ||||||||||
| Kondoh, Kensuke | 3 | 4 | 25 | 53 | 2 | ||||||
| Kuribayashi, Ryoji | 6 | 18 | 21 | ||||||||
| Kuriyama, Hideki Mgr | 13 | 3 | |||||||||
| Maki, Shugo | 8 | 7 | 46 | 48 | 22 | 21 | |||||
| Makihara, Taisei | 32 | 24 | |||||||||
| Matsui, Yuki | 21 | 20 | |||||||||
| Miyagi, Hiroya | 23 | 27 | 19 | ||||||||
| Murakami, Munetaka | 66,69 | 5 | 30 | 10,F-3 | 60 | 50 | 25 | 5 | 84 | ||
| Nakamura, Yuhei | 22 | 15 | 9 | ||||||||
| Nakano, Takumu | 18 | 11 | |||||||||
| Nootbaar, Lars | 9 | 2 | 10 | F-15 | 54 | 46 | 4 | 57 | |||
| Ohshiro, Takumi | 11 | ||||||||||
| Ohtani, Shohei | 8,26,53, 71,73 |
8,12 | 1 | 17 | 5,F-10 | 11 | 10 | 45 | 1,12 | 45 | |
| Okamoto, Kazuma | 52,70 | 7 | 25 | 54 | 6 | ||||||
| Ota, Taisei | 2 | 17 | |||||||||
| Sasaki, Roki | 19 | 9 | 16 | 3,F-8 | 34 | 49 | 28 | 13 | 21 | ||
| Shuto, Ukyo | 27 | 22 | |||||||||
| Takahashi, Hiroto | 24 | 31 | 16 | ||||||||
| Takahashi, Keiji | 9 | ||||||||||
| Togo, Shosei | 31 | 18 | |||||||||
| Udagawa, Yuki | 15 | 24 | |||||||||
| Yamada, Tetsuto | 26 | 52 | 17 | 7 | |||||||
| Yamakawa, Hotaka | 33 | 23 | |||||||||
| Yamamoto, Yoshinobu | 27 | 11 | 19 | 27,F-18 | 56 | 51 | 23 | 14 | |||
| Yamazaki, Soichiro | 5 | ||||||||||
| Yoshida, Masataka | 14,65 | 3 | 4 | 28 | 43 | 33 | 47 | 3 | 91 | ||
| Yuasa, Atsuki | 12 | 25 | |||||||||
| Team Japan | 20,67,72 | 1 |
Every member of Samurai Japan had at least one card. Not surprisingly, Shohei Ohtani had the most cards - 17. Munetaka Murakami was second with 11, followed by Roki Sasaki and Masataka Yoshida with 10 each. Yoshinobu Yamamoto had nine and Yu Darvish and Lars Nootbaar each had eight. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Takaya Kai, Takumi Ohshiro, Keiji Takahashi and Soichiro Yamazaki each only had a single card. The other two NPB imports to MLB besides Yamamoto - Shota Imanaga and Yuki Matsui - had just three and two cards respectively (and both of Matsui's were issued in Japan).
I thought I'd show a card from each of these sets although I don't have the Finest Ohtani card so I'll be showing an image I swiped off of Ebay. I didn't complete the Topps Finest, Bowman Chrome or Topps WBC sets - I ultimately only got one Finest card, two Bowman Chrome cards and 15 of the WBC cards so I "only" have 289 of the 521 cards, although I have 128 of the 142 Samurai Japan cards.
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| 2023 Topps Now World Baseball Classic #WBC-71 |
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| 2023 Topps Now WBC All Tournament Team #WBCA-3 |
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| 2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #WBCJPN-6 |
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| 2023 Topps Samurai Japan Team Set #29 (Shota Imanaga) |
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| 2023 Topps Global Stars #35 |
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| 2023 Topps Global Stars "Flags Of A Nation" #F-10 |
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| 2023 Topps 2 "WBC Stars" #WBC-60 |
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| 2023 Topps Finest "World's Finest" #10 |
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| 2023 Bowman Chrome "WBC Flag" #WBC-52 |
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| 2023 BBM Infinity #20 |
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| 2023 Topps Japan Edition "Samurai Japan" #WBC-14 |
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| 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic #21 |
This post would not be complete without mentioning some cards that I didn't feel comfortable putting in the list above. The WBC trophy toured the various NPB ballparks last year and in May it was at Chiba Marine Stadium. The Marines gave away three cards at the games that the trophy was on display at that featured the only two members of the Marines to suit up for this iteration of Samurai Japan - manager Mastato Yoshii (who was the team's pitching coach) and Roki Sasaki:
2 comments:
If I recall correctly there were also autographed patch cards from the WBC in 2023 Topps Dynasty. https://www.beckett.com/news/2023-topps-dynasty-baseball-cards/
Thanks, I missed those. Given that they're only memorabilia cards, it doesn't change the numbers.
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