2001 Bowman Chrome Ichiro #351 RC

A rookie card that had to be mailed for

Before the 2001 season, Topps had signed Ichiro Suzuki only to a short-term contract that expired in the middle of the year. That is why he is missing from 2001 Bowman and 2001 Topps Chrome. The company came to terms with him before 2001 Bowman Chrome was released, but too late to add him to the printed set. Its solution was redemption cards.

Exchange cards for Ichiro were seeded into packs, and collectors mailed them in for card #351. Topps announced that the redemptions would be produced at around the same level as the set's 110 short-printed rookie Refractors. Half were good for an Ichiro rookie printed in English and half for one printed in Japanese. All of them expired on June 30, 2003.

Like the other top rookies in the set, the Ichiro card is a Refractor. The rest of 2001 Bowman Chrome was sold at $3.99 for a four-card pack, 24 packs to a box. The set's other headline rookie, the Albert Pujols autograph, was also a mail-in redemption, so the two best rookie cards in the product both reached collectors by mail.

The pendulum swing from Toyoyama

Ichiro Suzuki was born October 22, 1973, in Nishikasugai-gun, Aichi, and grew up in Toyoyama, a small town outside Nagoya. From age seven he trained daily with his father, Nobuyuki, a routine that included hitting 500 pitches a day.

He debuted for the Orix BlueWave in 1992 at 18, but his first manager would not accept his unorthodox 'pendulum' swing and kept him mostly in the minors. A new manager, Akira Ogi, played him every day in 1994, and he set the Japanese single-season record with 210 hits, the first player to top 200 in a season there. He won seven straight Pacific League batting titles from 1994 to 2000 and three straight league MVP awards.

After the 2000 season Orix let him use the posting system, and the Seattle Mariners won the right to negotiate with him with a bid of about $13 million. He became the first Japanese-born position player to be posted and signed by a major league club.

2001: Rookie of the Year and MVP

Ichiro debuted for Seattle on April 2, 2001. He led the American League with a .350 batting average, 242 hits and 56 stolen bases, scored 127 runs and won a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger. With All-Star voting opened to fans in Japan, he became the first rookie to lead all players in All-Star votes. That winter he won both the AL Rookie of the Year and the AL MVP, only the second player after Fred Lynn to take both in one season.

The Mariners matched the 1906 Chicago Cubs' record of 116 wins. In his only postseason with Seattle, Ichiro hit .600 in the Division Series against Cleveland. The season ended on his 28th birthday, when the Yankees eliminated the Mariners in the ALCS.

It was a season played around a national tragedy. After the September 11 attacks baseball suspended games for a week, and the regular season was pushed into October. Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, and Arizona beat the Yankees in seven games in the World Series.

Ten straight 200-hit seasons and Cooperstown

Ichiro won a Gold Glove in each of his first ten major league seasons and was an All-Star in each of them. In 2004 he set the major league single-season record with 262 hits while batting .372. He had ten consecutive 200-hit seasons, and at the 2007 All-Star Game he hit the event's first inside-the-park home run and was named its MVP.

He later played for the Yankees and the Marlins before returning to Seattle, and played his last game on March 21, 2019. He finished his major league career with 3,089 hits, 509 stolen bases and a .311 average over 19 seasons. Counting his years in Japan, his 4,367 professional hits are the most of any player.

In 2025 he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, the first Japanese and first Asian-born player elected, with 99.7 percent of the vote, one vote short of unanimous and tied with Derek Jeter for the second-highest share ever. He was inducted on July 27, 2025, and was also elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame that year. In August 2025 the Mariners retired his number 51.

English or Japanese, and what they sell for

Both versions are numbered 351 and both are Refractors. The difference is the text: #351a is printed in English, #351b in Japanese. The scarcer parallels follow the same split. The Gold Refractor is serial-numbered to 99, with 50 English copies and 49 Japanese; one account says the English golds carry odd serial numbers and the Japanese even ones. An X-Fractor version was also issued by redemption.

Population reports for the Japanese-text Refractor show 39 copies graded PSA 10, 234 graded PSA 9 and 81 graded PSA 8. Since 2023, PSA 10 sales of the Japanese card have run from about $5,400 to $9,000, and PSA 9 copies about $1,000 to $2,100. The highest reported sale for any 2001 Bowman Chrome Ichiro is $43,200 for an English-text PSA 10.

The rarest version is the Japanese Gold Refractor. Only one copy has been graded PSA 10, and it was consigned to a summer 2025 auction as Ichiro entered the Hall of Fame; as of June 2025, the best price for a PSA 9 copy of that card was $15,000. For scale, the most paid at public auction for any Ichiro card is $207,400, for a 2001 Upper Deck Ultimate Collection autograph in October 2023.

The numbers

2001 season (card year)

157 G, 738 PA, 692 AB, 127 R, 242 H, 34 2B, 8 3B, 8 HR, 69 RBI, 56 SB, 14 CS, 30 BB, 53 SO, .350 BA, .381 OBP, .457 SLG, 126 OPS+, 316 TB, 7.7 WAR

2001 honors

AL MVP, AL Rookie of the Year, All-Star, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger; led AL in hits, batting average and stolen bases

2001 postseason

10 G, 38 AB, 7 R, 16 H, 3 RBI, 2 SB, .421 BA

2004 season

161 G, 262 H (major league record), .372 BA, 36 SB

MLB career (2001-2019)

19 seasons, 2,653 G, 3,089 H, 362 2B, 96 3B, 117 HR, 780 RBI, 509 SB, .311/.355/.402, 60.0 WAR

Japan (Orix, 1992-2000)

7 batting titles, 3 Pacific League MVPs, 210 hits in 1994

Honors

10x All-Star, 10x Gold Glove, 3x Silver Slugger, 2007 All-Star Game MVP, Hall of Fame 2025 (99.7%)

Timeline

1. Oct 22, 1973

   Ichiro Suzuki is born in Nishikasugai-gun, Aichi, Japan.

2. Jul 11, 1992

   Ichiro debuts for the Orix BlueWave at 18.

3. 1994

   Ichiro sets the Japanese single-season record with 210 hits.

4. 2000

   Seattle wins the posting rights to Ichiro with a bid of about $13 million.

5. Apr 2, 2001

   Ichiro makes his major league debut for Seattle.

6. 2001

   2001 Bowman Chrome is issued; Ichiro's #351 rookie is available only through mail-in exchange cards, in English and Japanese versions.

7. 2001

   Ichiro wins AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP.

8. Jun 30, 2003

   Deadline to redeem the exchange cards.

9. 2004

   Ichiro sets the single-season record with 262 hits.

10. 2007

    Ichiro hits the first inside-the-park home run in All-Star Game history and is named MVP.

11. Mar 21, 2019

    Ichiro plays his final major league game.

12. 2025

    Ichiro is elected to the Hall of Fame with 99.7 percent of the vote.

13. Jul 27, 2025

    Ichiro is inducted, the first Japanese-born player in the Hall of Fame.

14. Aug 2025

    The Mariners retire Ichiro's number 51.

15. Feb 18, 2026

    A Japanese-text #351 in PSA 10 sells for $5,793.

The world in 2001

• Jan 20, 2001

  George W. Bush is sworn in as the 43rd president.

• Sep 11, 2001

  The September 11 attacks kill almost 3,000 people; baseball suspends games for a week.

• Sep 17, 2001

  The New York Stock Exchange reopens after its longest closure since the Great Depression.

• Oct 5, 2001

  Barry Bonds breaks the single-season home run record; he finishes with 73.

• Oct 23, 2001

  Apple releases the first iPod.

• Nov 4, 2001

  Arizona beats the Yankees in Game 7 to win the World Series.

• Nov 15, 2001

  Microsoft releases the Xbox.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 2001 Bowman Chrome Ichiro #351 RC is number 76 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (61 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Ichiro is missing from 2001 Bowman and 2001 Topps Chrome because his card contract expired midseason.
• Every #351 had to be mailed for: the packs held only exchange cards, which expired June 30, 2003.
• Half the redemptions produced an English-text card and half a Japanese-text card.
• Ichiro was the first rookie ever to lead all players in All-Star voting, helped by voting opened to fans in Japan.
• He and Fred Lynn are the only players to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.
• Counting Japan, his 4,367 professional hits are the most of any player in history.
• He fell one vote short of a unanimous Hall of Fame election in 2025.