Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The oddest of oddball sets


I picked up a really odd set the other day: the JRM 38 1960 Oh and Nagashima Menko set.

This is a picture of the entire set - at just four cards its not a hard one to complete even though it is a bit scarce (in my case I got all four in one go).  It features two cards each of Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima.  According to Engel they were able to date the set thanks to the uniform Nagashima is wearing on the biggest one, which was the Giants' 1960 uniform.  On the other three they are all wearing uniforms from 1959.
 What really makes this set odd though is that none of the cards are the same size as each other.  They get progressively bigger, with Nagashima being on both the smallest and the largest, while Oh is on two that fall in the middle, but aren't the same size.

I don't know of any other card set out there where this is the case.  Even in the bizarre world of Japanese cards from the 50s and 60s, while there are a number of sets which have cards of differing sizes in most of those there are several cards that share the same size (like my good old JRM 8s). I think this is the only set where each single card is of a unique size.

Having acquired the set I now have to figure out what to do with it.  How in god's name are we meant to store these things?  Can't put them in binder pages, can't put them in regular card boxes, can't put them in holders (except the two smallest ones, the larger ones are too big).  I do have a folder for my oversized cards, so they'll probably be temporarily housed in there, but it isn't the best in terms of displaying the cards so I will need to work on that.
Storage issues aside I do really like these cards, they all have pretty good images of Oh and Nagashima on them, with striking background colors.  So its a cool set to have!

12 comments:

  1. Cool set. I've always liked that hat with the red (or orange) bill the Giants wore in 1960. It reminds me of my favorite San Francisco Giants hat, the one with the orange bill they started wearing in 1977.

    Not that I'm going to get a Yomiuri hat...

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    1. I like that orange/red bill too. Actually any hats that vary the color of the bill look pretty cool to me (even if they are Yomiuri ones....)

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  2. You can store them in a binder, it just takes a little creativity. Here's what I do: get one of those binder sleeves that holds an entire sheet of paper, and a full-sized sheet of card stock. Cut out a section of the card stock the same size and shape as the baseball card, and put the card in the hole. Then cut a few scraps off of the bit of stock that you cut out and glue them to the large sheet of card stock so that the baseball card won't fall out of the hole. (For rectangular cards this means they go across the corners.) Make sure, of course, not to get any glue on the card itself. For fragile cards (like T201s) I keep them in a card saver, and just put the entire card saver into the hole in the card stock.

    The one thing about this that I dislike is that it means that you have an oversized card in the background when you're looking at the pages in front of it. But you can take care of that by taking another full-page sleeve, sticking a piece of blank paper in it, and putting it between your ordinary cards and your oversized ones.

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    1. That sounds like a really good idea, kind of a weekend project I might tackle (I have quite a few oversized cards in addition to these so could fill up a whole binder), thanks Nick!

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  3. Confusing but cool. Bright colors, too. As for storing them, Nick's idea seems pretty good!

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    1. Very confusing indeed, unless they had an uncut sheet they probably would have never figured out these were all part of the same set!

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  4. Different sizes? Very cool. I feel like these could be framed and matted with a photo of Oh and Nagashima to make a really cool conversation piece.

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    1. Yeah, they are kind of "frame worthy"! I just worry about fading if I do that....

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  5. What size are they? Any chance they are the same size as a coin so you could use coin supplies?

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    1. Unfortunately even the smallest ones are much bigger than coins!

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  6. Those would look good frames for sure. It is odd that they are different sizes. Have not seen that before.

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    1. Might try to frame them, but the odd sizes create problems in that regard too!

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