This is my second Shonen Club addition to the collection after picking up my 1929 Shonen Club Babe Ruth last year (coincidentally exactly one year to the day ago).
I haven't been able to find any information on these (anyone out there know?) and I am not sure if these comprise a whole or partial set, but given the player/team combinations it can be inferred that they date from between 1952 and 1957 at the latest. Its an extremely impressive lot in terms of player selection, all four of them are members of the Hall of Fame. From left to right in the above photo we have Tetsuharu Kawakami (Giants), Kaoru Betto (Orions), Hiroshi Oshita (Lions) and Shigeru Sugishita (Dragons).
On the backs they are typical postcards. On the upper left corner is a box with the player's name and team. The text in the middle says "Shonen Club Special Photograph Postcard", and on the upper right is a spot telling you to put a 5 Yen stamp here.
I like these a lot, the images are colorized black and white photos which have a kind of cool look to them. As postcards they also make pretty cool display pieces, I might try having these framed at some point.
I am going to try and find out more about this set. From what I know from other Shonen Club sets, they usually consisted of more than 4 cards so I suspect there are more from this series out there. They also were usually issued in illustrated envelopes which are nice pieces in their own right and I'm hoping one with some baseball design might exist.
Cool set...interesting to see what you come up with.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll try to track down some more!
DeleteI wonder if we ever fight over the same auctions on YJA. I don't think I bid on these, though, if that was possible.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could come across some nice vintage cards these days.
It is possible that we do, though I've been cooling my bidding off a bit recently. I didn't have anyone else bid against me on these, they were kind of a lucky find!
DeleteHi Sean, hope you are well! I couldn't find a contact email in your profile so hoping that you see this in time!
ReplyDeleteI work for a sneaker retailer in the UK called size?, and we've got a collaboration shoe with Japanese brand Asics coming out with colours that are themed around the Chunichi Dragons. I'm sure I read on either this blog of another that you were Nagoya based. We're heading out to Japan next week to film some stories/interviews around the shoes, and were hoping to try and find people that were fans of the team, or collected Baseball cards related to the team.
If you'd be interested in discussing more and possibly being interviewed please feel free to give me a shout on james.measom@size.co.uk
Thanks, James