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.

2026 Epoch One Samurai Japan Cards

I had an email exchange with Ryan today and he alerted me to the fact that Epoch had issued some Epoch One cards for Samurai Japan.  There are 21 cards in all and they cover some of the exhibition games that the team played in February.  

As you'd probably expect, there are no MLB members of the team included but there are cards for Kensuke Kondoh, Teruaki Sato (2 cards), Shota Morishita (2 cards), Seishiro Sakamoto (2 cards), Kenya Wakatsuki, Hiromi Itoh, Hiroya Miyagi (2 cards), Chihiro Sumida, Hiroto Takahashi, Shugo Maki, Kaito Kozono, Koki Kitayama, and Shoma Fujihira with Sato, Morishita, Sakamoto and Miyagi having two cards each.  There are also cards for players who played in the exhibition games but are not part of the WBC roster - Hibiki Shinohara, Tai Sasaski and Daito Yamamoto (who also had two cards).

The cards are 500 yen each and will be available for three days - which will be roughly 6 PM JST on Monday, March 9th (5 AM EDT).  As always it does not appear that Epoch will ship these cards overseas.

Topps Now World Baseball Classic Cards

The World Baseball Classic kicked off today and, for the third time, Topps is issuing Topps Now cards for it.  So far there are only three cards available from the two games that were played today  - Travis Bazzana of Australia and Bo Gyeong Moon and Shay Witcomb of Korea.  All the cards will be listed on both Topps' US website and their Japanese website.   The cards are $8.99 each on the US site and 1485 yen on the Japanese one.  These three cards will apparently be on sale for 48 hours instead of what I thought was the standard 24 as they'll be available until 5:15 PM EST on March 7th.  I'm going to make a guess that Topps will release new cards at 5:15 EST for at least the next two days and then we'll see what happens on Sunday when most of the US switches to Daylight Savings Time.  My expectation is that the cards will go on sale at 6:15 EDT then but that's just a guess.

In addition to the single cards, Topps is also selling Topps Now team sets for six of the teams in the tournament - USA, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea and Puerto Rico.  The sets for the US, Japan, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela are $59.99 each (9900 yen on the Japanese site) and contain 13 cards - the 12 card base set plus one extra card that is either a parallel or an autographed card (I guess they've taken inspiration from BBM's box sets).  The Korea and Puerto Rico sets are $49.99 each (8250 yen) and have only 11 cards each - a 10 card base set plus the parallel or autograph card.  These sets will be available until 2:45 PM EDT on March 16th.

The twelve players listed for the Samurai Japan set are Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Kensuke Kondo, Yusei Kikuchi, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hiromi Itoh, Masataka Yoshida, Shugo Maki and Kaito Kozono.  There are seven different parallels available for all 12 players but there are only autographed cards available for four of them - Ohtani, Yamamoto, Murakami and Okamoto.

The ten Korean players are Jung Hoo Lee, Hyeseong Kim, Woo-Suk Go, Hyun Jin Ryu, Shay Whitcomb, Jahmai Jones, Dane Dunning, Do Yeong Kim, Hyun Min Ahn and Ju Won Kim.  Parallels are only available for the Jung Hoo Lee and Hyeseong Kim and Jung Hoo Lee is also the autograph available.

3/6 UPDATE - Checked Topps' website at 5:15 EST-ish and they've only added one card.  It was actually added earlier today.  The new card is for Shohei Ohtani's grand slam and is a little more expensive as it is $11.99 in the US and 1980 yen in Japan.  Apparently the difference in price is due to the possibility of getting a autographed and/or memorabilia card or an image variant card with it.  The card will be available until 2:45 EDT on Sunday, March 8th.

2026 Samurai Japan World Baseball Classic Roster

As promised (threatened?) the other day, here's my post for the roster of the Samurai Japan team for this year's World Baseball Classic.  Hard to believe the tournament finally starts in two days (well, it actually starts tomorrow, East Coast US time but Thursday in Japan.  Of course, it's WEDNESDAY in Japan as I type this so I guess it really does start tomorrow...).  It's even harder to believe that two weeks from right now is the final.

I picked Samurai Japan cards for the players whenever possible.  There were only five players who I didn't have a Samurai Japan card for and I would have for a couple of them if I'd continued getting cards last year.  I also wanted to highlight Samurai Japan cards for events other than the World Baseball Classic but there the only national team cards I had for one player (Taisei Makihara) were from the 2023 tournament so I had to go with that.

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #25

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #7

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes "Rack Pack" Japan Collegiate Team #8

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #8 Yumeto Kanemaru

2017 BBM 2nd Version #428 (Secret Version)

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #35

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #014

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #29

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #20

2023 Topps Japan Edition WBC Team #WBC-24

2023 Calbee Hawks #SH-35

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #4 Hiroya Miyagi

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #3

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #003

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-20

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-06

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27 Kazuma Okamoto

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan Team Set #SJ-4

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #34

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #8

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #25 Ukyo Shuto

2024 Epoch NPB #175

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-03

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship Team Set #SJ-3 Chihiro Sumida

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-09 Seiya Suzuki

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #30

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #6 Atsuki Taneichi

2020 BBM 2nd Version #454 (Secret Version)

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-19 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan Special Box Set #M-8 Masataka Yoshida

I was kind of surprised when looking back through my old posts to discover that I had not done posts for the 2009 and 2013 WBC rosters.  I didn't start doing it until the 2017 tournament.  This will probably be the last time I do it (at least with cards that I actually own) as I'm sure the 2029 team will have young players who I won't have any cards for.

Kenny Strikes Again

It wasn't even a day after I posted about getting a surprise envelope in the mail from Kenny - perhaps better known as Zippy Zappy - when I received a second envelope in the mail from him.  This one had ten cards in it, all from 2025 sets.

The first three cards were from the 2025 Topps NPB set:

2025 Topps NPB #68

2025 Topps NPB #186

2025 Topps NPB #211

It's interesting that Topps decided to use black ink on the names on the first and last of these three cards.  They're not too difficult to read in person but, man, the scans are practically unreadable.  The Marines player is Kyota Fujiwara and the Giants player is Taisei Ota who just goes by "Taisei".

The next batch of cards were from the 2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB.  I think Stadium Club is probably the best NPB set that Topps does (ok, it's a small sample size of two) so I was very happy to get these cards:

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #126

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #25

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #73

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #35

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #97

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #45

I saved the best for last.  In September, Bushiroad had put out a Samurai Japan set under their collectible card game line "DreamOrder".  As far as I can tell, it's for the 2024 Premier 12 edition of the team and appears to have cards of all 28 players from the squad.  Kenny sent me the Hiroto Takahashi card from this set:

2025 Bushiroad DreamOrder Samurai Japan #PB01-SJ01

As Kenny mentioned when he shared this card on his blog, the foil on this card makes it difficult to scan (I'm paraphrasing a bit).  But it looks pretty nice in person.

I thought I'd share a gif that sums up my feelings about the cards:

Thanks again for the cards, Kenny!