These little Yamakatsu cards are just too cute to resist

 I have a long distance card trading relationship with a collector in the US named Jay.  He sends me Expos cards from the 1970s and I send him Japanese cards for sets he is working on.  I love doing this since its quite fun to get envelopes full of Expos cards from time to time and I also learn a bit more about Japanese cards that he is interested in but I hadn't been working on.  I recently picked up some 1980 Yamakatsu cards that he needed and I was quite taken by them.  The 1979 and 1980 Yamakatsu sets are pretty neat - they are about the same size as Calbee cards from the 1980s and basically everything that draws me to vintage Calbee cards draws me to these Yamakatsu ones too - simple design and colorful photos featuring in game action on the front, simple backs with a brief write up on the back.  What is not to like?

So I decided to jump into the fray and bought a few cards from the 1979 set (and one from the 1980 set which Jay didn't need).  All I can say is that I love these little things!

These aren't the first Yamakatsu cards I've bought, I actually already have a 1978 set on the go, but those are larger cards (also awesome, I have to do a post about them too sometime), and I also have a couple of the post card sized ones including my only Japanese card of Willie Davis.

As is always the case, Dave has done a great overview of the Yamakatsu cards on his blog so I won't go into the details.  The 1979 set has 128 cards and the 1980 set has 64 and I don't think there are any hyper rare short prints, so compared to Calbee sets of similar vintage collecting both should be a manageable goal, and I've already got bids in on some other ones on Yahoo Auctions.  So this is my new collecting project of 2018!