The First Shohei Ohtani Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Card Sold a Lot of Copies
Within hours of announcing he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Topps had the first baseball card of Shohei Ohtani with his new team up for sale. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, the 2023 Topps Now Off-Season card even had the two-way star in his new uniform.
Available for 24 hours on Saturday and into early Sunday, it shattered the record for most copies sold for the print-on-demand line. A total of 107,541 copies were purchased. This makes it the first Topps Now card to sell more than 100,000 copies.
By comparison, Ohtani’s first Topps Now card commemorating his signing with the Los Angeles Angels in December, 2017 sold 17,323 copies. Of course, he wasn’t the international mega-star that he is today and Topps Now was still in its infancy.
Just two other Topps Now cards have cracked 90,000 copies. The first was Bernie Sanders and his memed to the moon mittens huddle at Joe Biden’s Presidential Inauguration 91,169 copies.
The card celebrating Aaron Judge’s 62nd home run in 2022 topped that with 91,685 copies.
Dang! So if you are lucky enough to get one of the Ohtani parallels I bet those command serious money with so few parallels created out of 107000 cards sold, and it being his absolute first Dodgers card. WOW!
Someone in the design room just pitched a card commemorating the card.
If it has to be photoshopped, it’s not a card, it’s a spectacle.
I would have to agree, if this is a photoshop then it’s not a true in action, with TEAM, Baseball CARD.
With that being said, how about a HAĜNk Aaron’s card from a 2023 set that’s definitely a photoshop card, DO YOU VALUE THAT AS A COLLECTOR?
I’m not a bit surprised at this move by Topps!!!
Last year Topps failed to produce a
Michael Harris ll ROOKIE CARD! Can you believe
That for the year 2022 Topps failed to provide a COMPLETE SET, A COMPLETF SET Consisting of Six of the most sought after cards of the Year!
Two Rookie of the Year CARDS, one AL and NL, Two MVP ( Most Valuable Player) cards! One AL and one NL, AND Two CY YOUNG Cards, One NL And One AL.
I’d be willing to bet that every serious collector out there has experienced the same problem .
In the instance of Harris (and other rookies), the MLBPA and MLB largely dictate the cutoff date each year.