In 2018 Aaron Judge graced the first card in Topps’ Living Set collection, by artist Mayumi Seto. Now, four years later, Topps will be releasing the final card created by Seto's adept hand.

Mayumi Seto’s final card for Topps Living Set collection will be released on Wednesday, December 28th. Hideki Matsui will be the face found on card #584, a player chosen by Seto for not only his connection to Judge, but a familial connection to Seto as well.

Topps Living Set trading cards are conceptually like a decades-long-running television show. The faces may come and go, but the set is still the set. It doesn't start and end within a calendar year, characters are only repeated if they change franchises. Topps has Living Sets for MLB, Star Wars, and UEFA Champions League. There are new cards released every week, and each card is comprised of original artwork by artists from around the world. It's something you can start collecting and never stop collecting.

Within the MLB set, to date, there have been 583 cards with a total print run on 1,817,222. Each card is priced at $7.99, with Gold Foil Logo versions, full art versions and signed-by-the-artist versions of those, priced much more than $7.99. Artist Jared Kelley joined Seto in 2021, with each artist responsible for a card each release. An artist yet-to-be-named will be joining Kelly after the Matsui card release.

Some of Seto’s most iconic cards for the Living Set include:

Picking the final player to be represented by her artwork within the Living Set wasn’t as difficult as one might think. Hideki Matsui made sense for several reasons, as Seto expressed via a statement.

“I thought it was rare that my father's name (Hideki) and Mr. Matsui’s name (Hideki) have exactly the same Kanji characters. I had never seen anyone around me with the same Kanji, and he was one of the players who left a strong impression on me from childhood.

“Mr. Matsui was a Hanshin Tigers fan when he was a child, just as I was when I first became interested in baseball. (Also, both of us were born in June.)

“Next, in a book co-authored by Hideki Matsui and Masao Matsui “I really think how important it is to have something to work hard at every day.” Once again, these words impressed me very much. It has supported me to keep drawing every day, every week, and every year.

“And the most decisive factor was the fact that Living Set, which has been revived since 2018, was started by Aaron Judge, and when I was asked to request the last player, I thought it would be nice if I could end with either the same team as Aaron Judge or a Japanese player. Then, I thought it would be impossible for anyone else but Hideki Matsui, who has the same first name as my father and who was also a teammate of Judge.”

While Judge and Matsui never actually played together (Matsui retired in 2013, Judge’s rookie year with the Yankees was in 2017), they did star in a commercial together. Regardless, once a Yankee always a Yankee.

Seto has helped to create an iconic set of cards with her work at Topps, and will be missed (though it was expressed she will continue to work with Topps on other projects). However, as it is the Living Set, her art and the collection itself will continue to be enjoyed for generations to come.