2006 World Baseball Classic Roundup

I did a roundup on all the World Baseball Classic cards that Topps put out for the 2009 WBC a few years back, so I felt I should do one for the 2006 Edition as well.  Upper Deck had the license for the cards that year (at least in the US - there were no cards in Japan that I'm aware of) and they produced seven separate sets:

- a 50 card box set
- a 30 card "Inaugual Images" set
- a 25 card "World Future Stars" set
- a 50 card "All World Team" set
- a 50 card "WBC Moments" set
- a 100 card "Future Watch" set (with each card serial numbered to 999)
- a 15 card "Counterparts" set with each card featuring two players
- a 15 card "Ovation Nation" set

Everything but the box set were insert sets in various Upper Deck issues that year.  (This is only a list of "normal" cards - not memorabilia or autograph or parallel issues.)

There were a total of 320335 cards, slightly more than what Topps did in 2009.  There were 5456 cards for members of the victorious Japanese team, representing 16 of the 29 players (plus manager Sadaharu Oh).  Several players have multiple cards in some of the sets.  Here's a list of the players who were included:

Player	Cards
Arai, Takahiro	Future Watch #52
Fukudome, Kosuke	WBC Moments #CM-23
Imae, Toshiaki	Box set #31
Iwamura, Akinori	Future Watch #53
Kawasaki, Munenori	Future Watch #54
Matsunaka, Nobuhiko	Box set #30, Inaugural Images #II-18, World Future Stars #WBC-12, All World Team #AWT-24, WBC Moments #CM-19, Future Watch #55, Counterparts #6, Ovation Nation #ON-NM
Matsuzaka, Daisuke	Inaugural Images #II-27 & #II-30, World Future Stars #WBC-12, All World Team #AWT-28, WBC Moments #CM17 & #CM-24, Future Watch #56, Counterparts #1, #9 & #13, Ovation Nation #ON-DM
Miyamoto, Shinya	Future Watch #57
Nishioka, Tsuyoshi	Inaugural Images #II-03, World Future Stars #WBC-14, Future Watch #58, Counterparts #7
Oh, Sadaharu	WBC Moments #CM-18, Future Watch #62
Ohtsuka, Akinori	WBC Moments #CM-21
Satozaki, Tomoya	Inaugural Images #II-19, World Future Stars #WBC-15, All World Team #AWT-25, Future Watch#59
Suzuki, Ichiro	Box set #29, Inaugural Images #II-25, All World Team #AWT-26, WBC Moments #CM-20 & #CM-25, Counterparts #3 & #8
Tamura, Hitoshi	All World Team #AWT-27
Uehara, Koji	Inaugural Images #II-17, World Future Stars #WBC-16, All World Team #AWT-29, WBC Moments #CM22, Future Watch #60, Counterparts#11 & #15
Wada, Kazuhiro	Box set #32
Watanabe, Shunsuke	Box set #33, World Future Stars #WBC-17, Future Watch #61, Counterparts #12

(NOTE - I don't have any of the Future Watch or Counterparts cards, so I'm using the checklists from SportsCardForum.com.  The actual cards probably have a couple letters as a prefix to the card number.)

Nobuhiko Matsunaka is the only Japanese player to appear in all seveneight sets.

Here's the list of the 13 team members who did not end up with any cards in the sets:  Ryokji Aikawa, Norichika Aoki, Kyuji Fujikawa, Soichi Fujita, Hirotoshi Ishii, Tatsuhiko Kinjoh, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Michihiro Ogasawara, Naoyuki Shimizu, Toshiya Sugiuchi, Motonobu Tanishige, Tsuyoshi Wada and Yasuhiko Yabuta.  I know that at least Ogasawara had a jersey card included with one of Upper Deck's sets.

Here's a sample card from each of the five sets that I have:

Box set #29

Inaugural Images #II-30

All World Team #AWT-24

WBC Moments #CM-23

World Future Stars #WBC-17

UPDATE 3/23/24 - Finally updated this post to include the Ovation Nation cards I learned about two years after writing it