Roki Sasaki Baseball Trading Cards You Can Collect Right Now
Article provided by Sports Collectors Daily
The talent pipeline between Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan and Major League Baseball continues to bear fruit. Roki Sasaki, a 23-year-old pitching phenom from the Chiba Lotte Marines, will be posted by his team and will sign a contract with an MLB team prior to the 2025 season.
Who he will be playing for is yet to be determined, but interest in Sasaki’s earliest baseball cards has been heating up with teams lining up to try and sign him. Sasaki did not complete six seasons in the NPB, which means he is entering the MLB as an amateur and is not eligible to sign a contract to the tune of Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s 12-year $365 million pact with the Dodgers last December.
Sasaki will essentially be signing a minor league contract and will not reach arbitration until his third season in the major leagues. Shohei Ohtani also took this route when he signed with the Angels prior to the 2018 season.
The obvious impact that Sasaki will have on the hobby is that he will be one of the most sought after rookies in the hobby in 2025. He is not the only high-profile rookie who will have his major league baseball card debut next year, but he will be in high demand.
Sales of Sasaki’s Japanese cards and those produced in conjunction with the World Baseball Classic have skyrocketed since late October. Over 500 listings sold on eBay Nov. 9 when news of his pending arrival heated up. Ten cards have sold for $1,000 or more this month on the platform.
Sasaki’s earliest trading cards date back to 2020, as he was featured in several top Japanese sports card sets from brands like BBM and Calbee.
Here’s a handful of Sasaki’s best NPB and pre-MLB cards available for purchase.
2020 BBM 1st Version #104
Collectors seem to consider this Sasaki’s best NPB card to own. It’s the flagship equivalent to what will eventually be his 2025 Topps Series 1 or Series 2 rookie card and is his first professional card. BBM began producing cards for the NPB in 1991.
PSA 10 versions of the card have been selling for $400 and up while raw copies are pushing north of $100. There are facsimile autographed versions as well.
2020 Calbee #94
Another leading card brand in Japan, this 2020 Calbee base card features the high leg kick of Sasaki while the card design itself has rounded corners. It may not be as sought after by collectors when compared to the BBM counterpart, but visually, it’s a must add to any budding Sasaki collection. PSA 10 copies have moved close to $200 with nice raw copies less than half of that.
2021 Topps Chrome NPB #194
Topps got into the NPB card game with a 2021 Topps Chrome set that featured a few future MLB players such as Yamamoto, Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga, along with Sasaki. The 2021 Topps MLB chrome set featured the same classic chrome design. It’s Sasaki’s first true Topps card and will surely continue to be a grail card in many collections.
Along with the base version, a full range of parallels from Refractor to the 1/1 SuperFractor make these some of the best Sasaki cards to consider. There are no recent sales of numbered versions of this card, but a base PSA 10 sold for $168 on Nov. 14.
2022 Bowman NPB Chrome #133
In 2022, Topps released a Bowman NPB product featuring paper and chrome cards. This product has an equally-large parallel rainbow to build and chase as the 2021 Topps Chrome NPB product. I love the large stride that is captured by Sasaki in this card, large enough to go off the card on both sides.
There is also something special about Sasaki having a Bowman card. While he is an NPB professional in this card, as far as the MLB is concerned, he is essentially a prospect. A PSA 10 version of this card sold for $73 on November 14, making it nearly $100 cheaper than its Topps Chrome NPB counterpart.
2023 Topps Series 2 World Baseball Classic #WBC-34
The World Baseball Classic subset in 2023 Topps Series 2 is a highly collectible insert set that features stars who participated in the most recent world tournament. Sasaki was overshadowed by Ohtani’s performance both on the mound and at the dish, but it was the first time the international stage got to see Sasaki pitch, and he did not disappoint.
Base versions of this card are selling for between $8-$10 dollars while numbered parallels will fetch significantly more.
Topps also produced a standalone set for the last WBC and you can find Sasaki there, too. Card #21 has a base card and an image variation with each having multiple parallel versions.
You can check out a current list of the 50 most watched Roki Sasaki cards below and see all of his cards being offered for sale on eBay here.
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