Ichiro Suzuki’s 2001 MLB arrival didn’t just change the game on the field — he helped feed growing international demand for baseball cards via plenty of new premium brands that helped pave the way for the ultra-deluxe stuff of today.

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A legendary career and baseball journey on two continents makes its final stop this month in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Hall of Fame and there’s a lot that can be said about that in several directions. 

Ichiro Suzuki changed the game with his arrival in MLB, eschewing the longball in favor of speed and hits — lots and lots of hits. But, “hits” are also the story of all those years when it comes to baseball cards with the prized rarities found in packs with autographs on them — or pieces of memorabilia in them — being an unstoppable force in those years. 

Of course, hits didn’t start with the Japanese star’s arrival, but many of his cards in sets alongside another now-legendary 2001 rookie, Albert Pujols, helped change the cardboard world even faster. Demand for their stuff prompted several new brands from several companies making MLB cards back then to try new things, capitalizing on their new stars who could move packs and boxes of cards -- just like they could move players around the bases and move butts into seats to watch games. One could argue that 2001 was in part a big piece in the evolution of what we see in today’s sports card landscape -- a focus on rarities with small print runs and with premium prices that weren’t like the wax paper-wrapped pocket-change treasures of not that many years before. 

Now, what’s to come here is absolutely not a definitive list of top cards — and it’s not one purely based on volatile values or one limited solely to Rookie Cards. Why? There’s a lot to choose from for Suzuki on all fronts — there could be several ways to take on this challenge. He has more than 50 different Rookie Cards between his 1993 Nippon Professional Baseball and 2001 Major League Baseball debuts (depending on how you want to argue about RC definitions) and he had roughly 500 cards in 2001 alone. Many of them are rarer cards where it is impossible to own them all thanks to small print runs and rare serial-numbered versions. 

In all, he appears on more than 19,000 different cards made over the years between NPB and MLB -- and even though his playing career ended in 2019 his cardboard career has not. He’s got a place in the game in seemingly every new baseball card set on the way and that figures to be the story for the rest of cardboard eternity. He’s not just a Hall of Famer … he’s an international icon.

Here’s a small sampling of 25 Ichiro Suzuki cards that are both fun and notable.

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You should know by now that Shohei Ohtani is having another historic year with dominating performances on both the mound and at the plate ... it's stuff that could only be called Ruthian -- and yet Babe Ruth didn't do it all at the same time.

Right now, on June 28, he leads the league in homers (28), RBI (64), slugging percentage (.654), total bases (200) and other offensive stats, while also having. 7-3 record on the mound with 127 Ks in 95 innings and a 3.02 ERA ... in short, he leads his team in pretty much everything. This kind of showing could mean serious headlines by year's end, too, with that home run pace alone.

The Japanese icon and pitcher-slash-DH's 2018 Rookie Cards are ones you should be thinking about right now as there's been a serious uptick in interest -- and it was already high. But, thanks to there being plenty of sets that year and with him in most of them, there's still a lot to choose from that's not priced out of many collectors' budgets. Things do get quite interesting with basic cards in slabs, too. (Prices should surprise you ... they did for me just prepping this.)

Ohtani, who had a ton of cards during his career in Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan starting in 2013, appears on literally thousands of unique baseball cards -- he'll probably hit around 15,000 by year's end or this time next year. More than 3,000 of those are from 2018 alone. His time in MLB releases started almost immediately as he never needed MiLB time and arrived in almost everything in the 2018 lineups from Topps, Panini America and elsewhere -- Rookie Cards, parallels, autographs, memorabilia you name it he's had it all since then. And there will be plenty more to come, perhaps making those earlier cards feel more unique to some ... especially if they missed out.

For simplicity's sake here, we have carved out all of his Topps Now and several other small-set cards sold as online releases as well as Panini America's meaty lineup of Ohtani (about 30 basic RCs and tons more when it comes to hits and inserts). We've also punted all autographs and Relic cards to make this a starting point with the widest affordability and accessibility possible, though there are plenty of high-dollar cards in this roundup.

Keep reading for a rundown of Shohei Ohtani Rookie Cards ... and it won't even be all of his stuff you could dabble with from that key year as there are plenty of cards with RC logos that don't fall under the definition.

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One of Major League Baseball's young stars is in the World Series -- and hitting .571 through two games -- and that means there should be even more people watching him and potentially thinking about buying some his baseball cards.

Where do you start when it comes to Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto? Well, that's what we're here for and it's not that simple -- though it is a tad simpler than when we revisited Ronald Acuña Jr.'s Rookie Cards earlier this year. The 21-year-old (as of tomorrow, the day of Game 3) appears on nearly 2,200 different baseball cards despite just arriving on cardboard in 2016 and on Rookie Cards last year -- in fact he appeared on basically 700 different cards in 2018 alone -- so that's where we'll start with the simple stuff, his RCs.

He's got around 20 Rookie Cards based on traditional definitions and set builds, but for simplicity we've punted anything that's got an autograph or memorabilia swatch as part of the package. We're looking at the simplest of those -- 15 cards of varying values and ease of finding. Some are challenges, some are not -- but now's the time to be paying more attention than ever to them.

Keep reading for a rundown of Juan Soto's Rookie Cards.

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You should know by now that Ronald Acuña Jr. is having a historic year with the 30-30 Club already set to appear on his 2020 baseball cards -- and there's a serious chance he could become the youngest member of the elite 40-40 Club before the season is over, too.

But it's The Atlanta Braves outfielder's 2018 Rookie Cards that you should be thinking about right now as there's been a serious uptick in interest -- and there's still a lot to choose from that's not priced out of many collectors' budgets.

Acuña appears on more than 3,500 unique baseball cards since he arrived in prospect and minor-league sets back in 2016 and that number has gotten there rather quickly. Amidst his arrival and National League Rookie of the Year award-winning season last year, for example, he appeared on more than 1,700 new cards and more than 1,000 of those were made by Topps just last year.

For simplicity's sake here, we have carved out all of his Topps Now and several other small-set cards sold as online releases as well as Panini America's meaty lineup of Acuña RCs (those could be their own future rundown ... and likely will be). We've also punted all autographs and Relic cards from last year to make this a starting point with the widest affordability net possible -- though ink and parallels in the sets where he has basic RCs will get mentions. That said, even with this starting point, there's still a good mix of high-end and low-end cardboard -- and even the low-end stuff can generate some good Acuña Cash when professionally graded.

Keep reading for a rundown of Ronald Acuña Jr. Rookie Cards.

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