CHASE CARDS: These spectacular inserts could attract attention at the National Sports Collectors Convention

With the MLB season headed down the stretch, there are a handful of new, rare and spectacular cards that could capture the hobby's attention at the 45th National Sports Collectors Convention.

Topps Sterling Baseball was released in June, giving collectors time to try to track down Shohei Ohtani’s amazing Kanji game-used bat card.

This masterpiece includes an actual piece of Ohtani's game-used bat that contains the Kanji inscription on the wood as well as Ohtani's autograph, which is also written in Kanji, a beautiful system of Japanese writing using Chinese characters.

Much like Ohtani himself, this card connects American and Japanese culture in a baseball melting pot and offers an unicorn item to be treasured by collectors. Hopefully this card surfaces at The National.

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Topps also produced another amazing card in Topps Dynasty. The card is a #1/1 Aaron Judge autograph card featuring a game-used batting glove. This beautiful card features a chunk of the adidas logo from the glove with a full Judge autograph adorning the card above the glove, near a small image of number 99. The historic piece is beautifully framed in a nice thick, gold border.

With Judge flirting atop the AL leaderboard in batting average, home runs and RBI again, this could be one of the most noteworthy insert sets of the year.

Although he plays for the pitiful Pirates, once-in-a-generation pitcher Paul Skenes continues to demand collector's attention. Topps Series 2 Baseball is always a wildly popular product and the 2025 version is no different. One of the coolest Skenes inserts is part of is the K Zone insert.

The bright, die-cut K Zone cards picture the Bucs ace ready to unleash a pitch. The standard “K” card is inserted into 1/2,032 packs while the ultra-rare backward ”K” version is found one 1/10,152.

The K Zone rotation includes current greats like Ohtani and AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal as well as retired aces like Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. If one of these is pulled at The National, you might hear the screams from across a crowded convention center.

This short list is the tip of the iceberg of the gigantic cards that might be available or on display at The National. Happy hunting!