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Shohei Ohtani Secures Massive, Exclusive Baseball Card Deal

Josh Wilson

Shohei Ohtani celebrates in the Dodgers dugout
Shohei Ohtani celebrates in the Dodgers dugout / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
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Thursday, Topps announced an exclusive partnership with two-way MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers batter/pitcher is partnering with the brand on a unique global trading card deal. Previously, Ohtani partnered with Topps in a non-exclusive fashion.

As a part of the deal, Topps will manufacture products that feature Ohtani autographs and game-used memorabilia to be distributed in the United States and Japan markets. David Leiner, President of Trading Cards at Fanatics Collectibles, which owns Topps, promised that the partnership would give collectors, "product that's never before been seen in the hobby."

Ohtani joins other countrymen, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Ichiro Suzuki, and Hideki Matsui in partnering with Topps. He also joins a roster of larger-than-life athletes partnered with Topps like LeBron James.

“I'm happy to be exclusively partnering with Topps to give fans unique cards and collectibles for seasons to come," Ohtani said in the press release. Just a few days ago, Topps announced a 1/1 card with a "40/40 club" inscription from Ohtani along with the date he achieved the exclusive mark.

Fanatics acquired the familiar Topps trading card brand in 2022 and is giving a new platform to the collectibles space. Earlier this month Fanatics held a "fan fest," a sports-angled convention comparable to conventions in other spaces like Comic Con, and later this year will hold its first unique auction in a deconsecrated church.

Ohtani famously is reported to make a number in the ballpark of $100 million annually from endorsements and non-baseball contracts. Quite possibly, that massive figure gave him the flexibility to largely defer his contract with the Dodgers in last offseason's free agency, giving the franchise more flexibility to build a winning team around him.

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Josh Wilson

JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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