Shohei Ohtani is a global superstar. His baseball cards are in high demand all over the world, especially in his native Japan, where the Ohtani market continues to soar.
By Greg Bates⋅
JUL 24, 2026
Robert Klevens has been a renowned dealer of Japanese baseball cards and memorabilia since 1989.
During that time, he’s watched players such as Ichiro Suzuki, Hideo Nomo and Hideki Matsui go from the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league and make an impact at the Major League Baseball level.
But Klevens has never seen so much interest in collecting that country’s cards until now. The reason for that is, of course, Shohei Ohtani.
Ohtani played in the NPB from 2013-17 before coming to the United States and exploding on the scene. Having logged five years playing professional baseball in Japan, there are plenty of cards available for the dual-position, global superstar.
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Collectors have been chasing Ohtani’s first MLB cards from the 2018 season for years. But his MLB rookie cards have now priced out a large segment of the collecting population. A number of Ohtani’s second-year cards are also becoming unattainable for those without deep pockets. There has been a major shift in collectors now going after Ohtani’s Japanese cards.
Klevens relates Ohtani card prices to an escalator—prices climb so high people have to go to the bottom and find something else to collect. He said any Ohtani items that can be placed in a holder are really hot.
“There are quite a few Ohtani rookie cards, obviously, and they have gone up so much. It’s gotten so crazy that I think most people can’t afford them. So, they’re going to the Japanese cards, all the other years,” Klevens said. “They keep going up and in Japan the prices keep going up to such an extent that even they’re getting too expensive. Now, people are going into magazines. There’s a 2012 magazine that sold for $40,000 in the Goldin auction. I actually have two of them in a little lower grade. But even in Japan those have been going crazy.”
Klevens remembers trying to unload a number of Ohtani Japanese cards a few years ago but there wasn’t much interest from collectors.
“I was selling them at The National for $8-$30 ungraded in different years and I didn’t even sell them all,” Klevens said. “I had a bunch graded. It’s just too hard to buy anything Ohtani anymore because of the prices.”
In his four decades of handling Japanese baseball cards, Klevens has seen it all. But Ohtani cards are definitely a step above in popularity.
“The one thing that never made sense to me with this stuff is, if you look at when Ichiro came here, his rookie cards from Japan were selling for like $1,800 for BBM PSA 10s,” Klevens said. “That’s before he played, then he had a great career here and got in the Hall of Fame and his cards are only a little bit more.
“But with Ohtani it just seems like there’s no end in the prices and the demand. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Scott Sher started investing in Ohtani’s Japanese cards in 2019. It wasn’t until a year and a half ago that he started to see Ohtani’s pre-MLB cards gaining popularity.
“I feel like except for the short-print auto cards, not until the end of 2024, the beginning of 2025 is when you started to see a real uptick,” Sher said. “Then like 2025 for the non-auto cards, the market went nuts and I saw cards that I literally bought for dollars are now being sold for thousands of dollars.”
Vice President of CGC Cards Andy Broome started to notice an uptick in Ohtani’s Japanese cards being submitted for grading in the final quarter of 2025. It wasn’t just at CGC’s Florida facility, but also at the company’s Hong Kong and Shanghai offices.
“People are starting to branch out and see what’s out there,” Broome said. “I think even the markets in Asia are starting to go back and say, ‘Oh, hey, let’s grab some of these up.’ I don’t know how popular they are in Japan, actually. But I see prices and stuff over there, and a lot of people are savvy trying to get U.S. prices. I don’t have enough data to say for sure, but I don’t know if the Japanese cards are popular in Japan now. The U.S. cards of Ohtani are immensely popular over there.”
Broome finds it interesting that even though Ohtani came to the United States and started tearing it up right away, his Japanese cards weren’t popular. It took about seven years for the collecting community to latch onto his first cards as a professional baseball player.
“I think that’s always kind of been the case, especially for international guys coming over. Their foreign cards just never have the same popularity as their U.S. rookie card,” said Broome, who also collects Ohtani Japanese cards. “But Ohtani, I think, is absolutely the exception to that rule. Now, if it’s got Ohtani on it, no matter what it is, it’s the hottest thing on the market.”
JAPANESE CARDS
In the five years Ohtani played professionally in Japan, there were hundreds of different cards produced, depicting him both as a hitter and pitcher. Even after Ohtani had moved 5,000 miles east to Los Angeles, Japanese manufacturers produced cards of him in 2018 and ’19.
There are four primary companies in Japan that have Ohtani cards: Baseball Magazine (BBM), Epoch, Calbee, and Bandai. There are also promotional cards that were team issued. BBM is the preeminent brand everybody knows in Japan; it has the same stature as Topps in the United States.
Sher has an extensive Ohtani collection but it’s his Japanese cards that really stand out.
“I think that BBM cards in particular are interestingly designed and have a lot more character and nuance than the U.S. cards,” Sher said. “I just thought that they were really great looking, so that’s how I got into them initially. Then I realized that they were considerably shorter printed, there weren’t as many parallels and rainbow variations. So, it was not an insurmountable goal to do as best as I could to collect every one of his cards, parallel or not.”
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Sher came up with an idea to try and collect all of Ohtani’s BBM cards. He painstakingly started his own set registry, figuring out there are 583 unique, non-autographed Ohtani cards produced by BBM; he has collected 530 of those. There are also 58 unique auto cards from BBM—Sher owns half of them. The autographs are short-printed; there are just a handful of 1/1s, a couple numbered to /3 and /5, and the majority of the remaining cards are to /10 (all numbered on the card).
There are 116 unique, non-autographed Ohtani cards from 2013. The first professional cards of Ohtani as an 18-year-old were produced by BBM as part of its Icon sets, which was released in February 2013.
In its magazine, BBM put out Rookie Edition cards that same year with Ohtani having two variations of him hitting and pitching. There are foil facsimile autograph versions of those two cards.
Ohtani’s 2013 BBM 1st Version has a number of variations. There is a flagship base card, called Red Wing, which is the equivalent to Ohtani’s 2018 Bowman Chrome rookie. There are also several promotional versions of the card: multiple stadium event promos (Green Wing) and sports card magazine promos. In that product, Ohtani also has silver foil facsimile autographs, gold foil auto, red foil auto, and a foil auto.
“I think collectors consider the 1st Version cards to be the most desirable,” Sher said. “There’s a base version of that card, which has like a pop count of about 400 PSA 10s that’s still selling between $17,000 and $25,000. I’d say in terms of demand that’s probably the highest demand. I think the Icon cards are really cool. I really like the Rookie Edition Premium cards, too, which are not flagship cards, but they’re super interesting sets.”
Sher believes it was only a matter of time until collectors would catch onto Ohtani’s pre-MLB cards. It’s the scarcity of his Japanese cards that is really driving the market.
“I think there’s a high demand for Ohtani in general, because he is a generational player and he may be the most talented person to ever play the game,” Sher said. “So, when you have a generational talent, you get into $600,000 for a short-run Bowman 2018 auto card, people are going to start to say, ‘Well, I can’t get that card. What card can I get that’s almost as cool?’ That’s when people started to realize there were these Japanese cards. And then I think what’s really driven demand is, unlike a Bowman card, where if you look at the rainbow of the base Bowman Chrome—not talking about Bowman Platinum or Sapphire—you have upwards of a thousand autos just on his pitching rookie card, depending upon the parallel or if it’s not numbered. There are over a thousand of them. You look at BBM in 2013, there are 10 unique cards. The print run on eight of them is 10. The print run on one of them is 15. And the print run on the last one is five.”
Sher owns eight of the 10 unique cards.
In February of this year, a 2013 BBM Hokkaido autograph parallel numbered to /10 sold for $430,050 through Goldin. Sher considers that card to be one of Ohtani’s worst Japanese signed cards from 2013, yet it sold for a record price. That price tag is approaching what an Ohtani 2018 Bowman Chrome Gold or Orange parallels sell for.
Sher never thought when he started collecting Ohtani Japanese cards seven years ago that they would explode in price and popularity.
“I am very surprised by it,” Sher said. “I certainly didn’t buy them with the expectations that they would be this expensive. I actually bought them because I was a really big Shohei Ohtani fan and I thought they looked really cool.”
Sher’s favorite Ohtani cards were produced after he left Japan in 2018. The BBM Grateful Days set highlights Ohtani’s career in cards. Comprised mostly of base cards, an autographed card from the set is Sher’s top choice. Graded PSA 10 for both the card and autograph, it’s an image of Ohtani running with his back to the photographer and his left fist in the air.
“It’s just an iconic pose. It’s just awesome,” Sher said. “It’s probably not the most valuable, although people have called me up and offered me stupid sums for it. It’s not my most valuable card, but I do love that card.”
Another one of Sher’s favorite Ohtani’s is a dual card of him hitting and pitching, a 2013 BBM Rookie Limited Edition Authentic Auto in a PSA 10 slab. Sher said a PSA 8 version of that card sold through Goldin for $37,000 in 2021. When that sale occurred, Sher knew BBM cards had potential.
The first Ohtani card Sher ever purchased was in 2019. It was a 2018 Topps Chrome autographed base card in an SGC 10 gold label; he paid a whopping $981.
“I almost threw up, because I couldn’t believe I spent that much money on a baseball card,” Sher said. “A non-numbered card, I sold it in an auction in early May for $28,800.”
JAPANESE GOAT
Broome latched onto collecting Ohtani cards before he was even playing in the United States.
Since there are an extremely limited number of Ohtani autographed cards from 2013, Broome had to search hard for some examples for his personal collection. In 2017, he was able to track down several Ohtani Japanese rookie cards for collectors at the stadium. Broome had the autographs authenticated—they all came back good—and placed into holders. The price Broome paid for the raw autographed cards: about $60 apiece.
Broome really enjoys the fact that Ohtani has such a diverse batch of Japanese cards. The card companies in East Asia don’t produce a crazy number of parallels like in the United States.
“I think people are finally waking up to the fact that, hey, these are actually high quality and really cool cards,” Broome said.
With Ohtani’s 2013 BBM Rookie Edition card being popular amongst collectors, it stands to reason it is also one of most graded Japanese cards by CGC.
The Rookie Edition has a variety of low serial numbered variations, including red foil (only 30 produced), gold foil (/50) and silver foil (/100). A gold foil parallel of Ohtani batting in a PSA 10 sold in mid-March for $111,000.
“I bought it for, I think, maybe $800 like three or four years ago,” said Sher, who picked up the card raw.
According to Sher, the quality of card stock used by Japanese companies for their cards is outstanding. So good, in fact, that when cards are submitted for grading, they are more than likely going to be slabbed a 10.
“The interesting thing about the Rookie Edition cards is that they’re probably the best packed and highest quality cards around in any set of any manufacturer,” Sher said. “So, most of the cards from that set will grade a 9 or a 10, if you pull it out of a pack. Like a Topps Heritage card, you’re lucky if you get a 7.”
Broome also loves that modern Japanese cards—BBM, Calbee, and some of the other cards—are manufactured very well.
“They generally tend to be pretty high grade, as long as they’re carefully handled,” Broome said. “It’s high-quality stuff. I know the 2013 Fighter set rookie, we see a lot of that. That’s a card that gems pristine pretty easily.”
Broome is seeing a number of 2013 BBM Fighters cards (his favorite) coming in. Another card that’s being submitted more often is the 2013 BBM Classic, which uses the retro design from the 1991 BBM cards.
“I think that’s a really underappreciated one,” Broome said. “That’s a really cool card.”
Since there’s a global market for Ohtani, the hype around his cards and their values—especially when he was a rising star as a teenager—will continue to expand.
“I think people are going to be smarter about which cards are more valuable, though, and I think the limited print-run cards are going to be the ones that are most desirable,” Sher said. “Like the run-up on the non-numbered Red Wing card is inexplicable to me. I saw someone bought a version of it for $28,000—that doesn’t make any sense. It’s a non-numbered base card of which there are over 400 graded 10 examples. To me, that’s not worth $28,000.
“So, I think that those will come down in value but I think that the short-run cards are going to continue to increase in value.”
Baseball cardsBBM cardsjapanese baseball cardsmlbShohei OhtaniTopps
Greg BatesAuthor
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