The love fest between Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and his home country of Japan has kicked into high gear as the athlete prepared to take the field Tuesday for MLB’s Tokyo Series at the Tokyo Dome.
In the run-up to the game, Ohtani met with popular Japanese artist Takashi Murakami whose floral embellishments on the players’ jerseys have been a runaway success. On Monday, they both added their signatures to four cards — two that they kept for themselves and two that will be inserted into special Topps’ sets designed by the artist. The lucky fans who find a “redemption card” in their pack can redeem it for one of the signed cards.
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The sets designed by Murakami are the 2025 Topps Baseball Series 1 — Tokyo Game Exclusive and the 2025 Topps x Murakami MLB Tokyo Series Matchup Set. The Series 1 set will retail for $50 and will have Murakami-designed rare base card variations numbered one to five. The Matchup Set is a 25-card set that will sell for $120.
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This topped off a full weekend of festivities in Tokyo including an exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants on Saturday where Ohtani wore a custom-designed, gold-embellished MLB logo of the silhouetted batter on the back of his jersey, replacing the traditional club-colored one. The patch will be removed and inserted into a special Topps Gold Logoman card that will be sold later this year.
Prior to the game, Murakami opened packs of the trading cards he had designed at a local hobby shop, Mint Shibuya, which aired on Fanatics Live. He managed to find an Ohtani card in one of the boxes, a collectible estimated to be worth around $5,000. Whether he decided to keep the card or sell it to the highest bidder is not known.
Topps has been moving beyond simply issuing the standard baseball cards in the past couple of years and is offering versions with pieces of jerseys or other memorabilia inserted, as well as a popular rookie card program. The Paul Skenes MLB rookie card — yes, the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher dating Instagram star and gymnast Livvy Dunne — is currently being offered at auction and expected to sell for more than $600,000. That card features the patch Skenes wore on his jersey last season and was found in a pack of cards by an 11-year-old from Los Angeles.