2026 Topps Now WBC Cards

With the WBC wrapping up last night, Topps has put their final Topps Now cards for the tournament up for sale.  I'm a bit surprised at how few cards they did this year.  The first time they did Topps Now cards for the WBC - back in 2017 - they did 64 total cards (plus three Spanish language parallels).  For the 2023 WBC, they did 73 Topps Now cards.  That's just the single cards and not the various team sets that were also for sale both years.  This year's set had only 43 cards plus a short printed image variation for Shohei Ohtani and an unnumbered card featuring both Ohtani and John Cena.

There were only four cards featuring members of Samurai Japan.  I swiped the images of the cards from Topps' website:

#WB4

#W9

#W10

#WB15

If you bought the Ohtani card, you had a shot at getting the image variation card or an autographed memorabilia card as well:

#W4 (image variant)

Here's the card with both Ohtani and Cena:

Team Korea had their best showing in the WBC since 2009 but that was only good enough to earn them two cards in the Topps Now set.  Both cards featured events in Korea's 11-4 victory over the Czech Republic on October 5th:

#W2

#W3

Topps says on their website that "Select hobby products will feature WBC-inspired inserts later this year."  I wonder if that means they won't be doing sets only available from their website (like the "Global Stars" and "World Baseball Classic" sets from 2023).  I will try to post about what else they produce this year but since I don't monitor MLB cards very closely, it wouldn't surprise me if I miss stuff.