Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Actually Christmas is already over on this side of the International Dateline, its the 26th already. We had a great Christmas here, the above is all the stuff Santa brought for my kids, so they made out well!

This'll probably also be my last post of the year, so Happy New Year too.  2019 had its ups and downs for me, as with everyone, but one relevant thing I can mention is that my blogging output really soared.  At 95 posts for the year I obliterated my previous annual record of 35 set in 2014 (not coincidentally the year I became a dad), so blogging became much more of a regular activity for me in 2019 and I hope that can continue in 2020.

I didn't meet any of my collecting goals for the year, especially that damn 1987 Calbee set is still 3 cards short of completion (I did at least finally get it into a proper album), and my monster 1975-76-77 Calbee set didn't make much progress either. But I did add a ton of menko to my collection this year so it was still a good year for the collection!

See you in 2020!

Very Happy Pre-War Menko

 I picked up this lot of pre-war baseball menko and they just make me smile.  Everyone of them looks so happy and content with their lot in life, be it as a guy holding a bat, or running the bases, or about to throw a pitch. Its very hard not to smile back at them.

These were all die cut from the same sheet and were intended to be cut out into their final shapes, like the guy in the lower left corner is.  The lot I bought actualy had a few doubles in it, but there were five overall patterns as shown in the above picture.  The backs of each have the same image as the front, only in black and white and with a number in a box:

I've never seen copies of these cards before so they are "new" to the hobby, though perhaps of limited interest since they feature generic rather than identifiable players.  I do love the artwork on them though and not just the extremely smiley faces, the whole "chubby body" forms are quite charming in their simplicity too.

1964 Morinagas!

I finally got me some 1964 Morinagas!

If you live in Japan today you might know Morinaga mainly as the food maker responsible for making powdered milk for coffee which for some reason they called "Creap".  I have a jar of it right next to me as I type this in fact:

If you lived here in 1964 on the other hand you'd probably know them as....well actually even then you'd know them as the company that made Creap.  But you'd also know them as the company which put out probably the best baseball card sets of the 60s, next to Kabaya Leaf.

They issued two sets that year: "Top Star" and "Color Stand" (called "Standups" in Engel).  On the front they are basically the same, a color photo with a glossy finish and white border on a postcard sized card.  The backs differ quite a bit though.  The "Top Star" cards have a pretty simple back which gives some biographical information about the player depicted:

The "Color Stand" cards on the other hand have punch out tabs on them that allow you to fold them out into a little display stand, which is great.  It reminds me a bit of the 1988 Donruss All Star punch out stand ups I used to collect like 30 years ago.

 I picked up a lot of three of these on Yahoo Auctions a few days ago, two Top Stars and one Color Stand.  All three were pretty big names - Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura were my Top Stars (pictured at the top of this post) and Masaichi Kaneda was my Color Stand:

The three are in great shape and I'm really psyched to finally have some cards from those sets.  The Kaneda card I discovered might be an uncorrected error card.  If you look closely it spells his first name as "Shouichi" on the back instead of "Masaichi".  Both are correct readings for the kanji he uses for his name and its not uncommon for people to make mistakes like that, perhaps the guy editing it just didn't know the correct reading of his name (Japanese is hard because of stuff like this BTW).

Perhaps as interesting as the cards themselves are who I bought them from.  Larry Fuhrmann is kind of a legend among Japanese baseball card collectors since he is one of the most important pioneers in the modern hobby, he even played an important role in the creation of the first BBM set back in 1991.  You can read all about his history on Dave's excellent post here which I highly recommend.  I kind of like the fact that he got his start in Japan as an English teacher in Kobe since that is exactly how I got my start too, only I arrived in Kobe in December of 1999 (hit my twentieth anniversary just 3 days ago!) quite a bit later than him.  

Anyway, he is still in the hobby and runs a great business on Yahoo Auctions as dealer_Larry and I've bought a few things off him before, he is a good source for vintage stuff and I totally recommend keeping him on your watch list as he puts up some really interesting stuff sometimes.  I think he also sells on Ebay too, though I'm not really an Ebay guy anymore so I haven't checked!

Also, and this is something only people who collect cards via Yahoo Auctions Japan can appreciate - the cards arrived all stored in top holders which no Japanese dealer ever does no matter how expensive the cards.  Every other card I've purchased on Yahoo auctions (and there are a lot by now) has come sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard taped together, which is obviously cheaper for the seller but very annoying for the buyer since they never put any thought into the question of whether it will be easy for the buyer to extract the card from the wad of cardboard and tape they encase it in (its never easy to get them out!). 

Welcome to all my new Ukrainian Readers!

 GBIBCIJ (the acronym for my blog, I really regret not having gone with a simpler title) is proud to welcome all its new readers from Ukraine!

It seems in the past month interest in Japanese baseball cards in that lovely east European country has exploded.  Just look at the above Stats overview from the last week - I'm getting more Ukrainians than from every other country in the world combined!   I'm sure this is only affecting my blog and no others, am I right?  They just love Japanese baseball cards as much as they like playing the kobza!

Or at least I think they do, that's just one of the first images you get from Googling "Ukrainian culture".  So I'll go with that.

Anyway: Welcome!  Or as they say in Ukrainian:

Ласкаво просимо!

 Here is another interesting thing about Ukrainian Japanese baseball collectors, they seem to be particularly fascinated with a single post of mine that is more than 5 years old which accounts for about 90% of their page views.  Its about how when I was collecting the 2014 Calbee set I ended up with a lot of extra chip bags in my kitchen!

According to Google, this is what a Ukrainian kitchen looks like:

See?  No bags of Calbee potato chips anywhere to be found.  Hence their interest in that particular post, it must seem unusual to have kitchens full of bags of Calbee baseball chips if you are from a country that has none!

Also they all seem to have stumbled onto my blog through the same URL, something called "onlinenow".  Totally legit if you ask me.  Definitely nothing untowards going on there and I'm 100% sure that if I click on that back link I will have zero regrets about doing so. No regrets at all, no sireee.  I just haven't had the time to do so, but I'm sure I'll be pleasantly surprised if I ever do.

Happy as I am to welcome all my new Ukrainian readers, it is with a sad heart that I have to announce that interest in Japanese baseball cards from Russian readers seems to have dropped off a cliff almost the exact moment Ukrainian readers became so engaged.  This may have been caused by my controversial post "Bad Stuff about my Russian Readers" which I admit may have gone too far in places and could have caused offence.  I'm sorry, Russian readers, please come back!

Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll be able to parlay my newfound "Big in Ukraine" status into some lucrative endorsement deals there, I promise to keep you updated on how that goes.

Uncatalogued Caricatures

 Here are a couple of more old menko acquisitions, featuring Bozo Wakabayashi and Kiyoshi Sugiura.

I got these as part of a bigger lot and I was kind of surprised to find out when I tried to look them up in Engel that they are uncatalogued.  They don't seem to be super rare new discoveries since I've seen cards from the set before, so I'm not sure why they aren't in the guide, but anyway I thought I'd share them since they are kind of neat.

I mean, in terms of explaining why they are neat the pictures themselves basically do all the talking.  Menko from the late 40s and early 50s featuring hand drawn images usually either go for extremely simple (bordering on generic) or extremely detailed representations of the players.  This one though goes full on caricature, which gives it a very unique appearance.

The backs of the cards have the player's name and "Baseball tournament" (Yakyuu Taikai) written on the top, along with a number and junken symbols.

Wakabayashi is one of the more interesting players in Japanese baseball history.  He was actually born and raised in Hawaii to parents who had immigrated from Hiroshima.  As a high school student he was his school's ace pitcher and was chosen to go on an exhibition tour to Japan in 1928.  Hosei University recruited him and he became a dominant pitcher in the Tokyo Big 6 university circuit in the early 1930s.  When the first pro league was formed, he joined the Tigers and became one of the top pitchers in the very earliest days of pro ball in Japan, his career lasting until 1953.  He finished with 237 career wins and a 1.99 career ERA (!) and was later inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Sugiura's resume isn't quite as impressive, his pro career only lasted 8 seasons between 1946 and 1953, though this severely underestimates his overall career since he was already 32 years old in 1946 when he made his debut.  Like Wakabayashi he had been a player in the 1930s Tokyo Big 6 University league, playing for rival Meiji University.  Since he stayed at Meiji University for graduate school his university career was longer than Wakabayashi's and, like many in his generation, his ability to start a pro career was further delayed by the war.  When he finally got his chance though, despite his age, he was able to show his stuff.  He hit over 20 home runs in 3 seasons and was selected to the Best Nine in 1947.  Not Hall of Fame material, but an impressive player nonetheless!

Yogi Berra Discovery!

 I got kind of excited a couple weeks ago when I stumbled onto an auction for the above two menko, one featuring Lefty O'Doul and the other Yogi Berra.

I looked these up in Engel and they appear to come from the set he catalogues as JCM 126 which commemorated the 1951 US All Star tour of Japan.  The set is extremely rare (they rate it as R5, fewer than 5 copies of each card known) and features Joe Dimaggio.

But here is the thing, Engel doesn't list Yogi Berra or Lefty O'Doul in the set.  So I had this neat "Holy crap, this is a newly discovered card of a big name Hall of Famer" moment.  In fact, this might be the only copy of this Yogi Berra card known to exist! And its kind of a cool looking one too!

I put in some bids that were much higher than what I usually do but ended up losing it, I guess I wasn't the only one out there who had the same reaction!

I was plagued with doubts about whether I should have bid higher, did I let a once in a lifetime opportunity slip by?

Then a weird thing happened.  The same seller listed  copies of the same two cards again!

The two cards in the second auction (which at the time of writing is still live) are definitely second copies of each, particularly with the Berra you can notice his card in the second auction is in way worse condition than it was in the first, having the borders completely trimmed off.

This made me feel a lot less bad about missing out on the first auction, since I now know for a fact that it wasn't the only copy of that Berra (and O'Doul, who was no slouch either) in existence.  I've decided not to bid on this second one mainly because the Berra is in such poor shape (I guess it goes without saying that if I was bidding on it I would have waited until after the auction ended to post about this, hope nobody gets mad at me for "outing" it).

Anyway, at the very least I can say that there are two additions to the JCM 126 set, both pretty big names!

Rainbow Effect Menko

Colors!  Like a rainbow only not in the correct order.

Baseball menko from the tobacco era (roughly 1957 to 1964) generally came in two styles: with border or without.  I kind of prefer the ones without border and this collage of a dozen that I recently picked up (part of the same lot that turned up my black and white Kaoru Betto find) demonstrates why.  These just look so awesome when you put them together, an effect that would be dampened if they had little white borders separating the bold colors each has as a backdrop.

Though they look largely the same on the front, they have different backs and the lot contains cards from five different sets:

JCM 27  1957 Yamakatsu
JCM 66a 1957 Maruya
JCM 33a 1958 Yamakatsu
JCM 43a 1957 Marusan
JCM 42a 1958 Marusan

There are a few hall of famers in here.  Atsushi Aramaki  had a Hall of Fame career mostly with the Mainichi Orions.  In his rookie season in 1950 he led the league in both wins (26) and ERA (2.06) and took home the Rookie of the Year award.  Oddly he never led the league in any major category again in his 12 year career, but he was consistently good over the period from 1950 to 1959, finishing his career with a 173-107 record and a miniscule 2.23 career ERA.

Now that I have these cards, in addition to a few others from the same sets I had from before, I think I'll get to work on some actual set-building with them.  Unfortunately they are pretty hard to come by.

Kaoru Betto Discovery

 

A little pile of old menko I picked up recently unexpectedly turned up this treasure: a new Kaoru Betto card!  By "new" I mean uncatalogued and thus until now unknown to the hobby.

Betto is a pretty big Hall of Famer who I did a small write up about a couple of months ago, so I won't say much more about him in this post.

The set this card is a part of is catalogued in Engel as JCM 132.  He lists it as R5, meaning fewer than 5 copies of each card are known and its one of the few sets that they haven't got enough cards of to actually provide even a partial checklist for, so with this find I can contribute the fact that Kaoru Betto has a card in the set and this is what it looks like.

The set is one of the "animal back" type issued in 1957 which are among the hardest of the tobacco era menko sets to find.  The name comes from the back, which looks like this:

I love the photo used on this card, its a magnificent shot of Betto with the stands packed full of people creating a perfect backdrop.  The resolution is quite good for a 1950s menko card, which is one of the benefits of the black and white ones over the colorized ones!

I just love making little discoveries like this!

1948 Menko Beauties

I'm in love with these.

I picked up the above lot of extremely colorful and just all around wonderful menko a little while back off of Yahoo Auctions.  There are sixteen cards which seem to come from 6 different sets (based on the different back designs, some have very similar designs on the front).

I've only been able to identify three of the sets they come from in Engel - JCM 1, JCM 100 and JCM 48.  All of those were issued in 1948 and judging from the similar designs I think the others were too.

I just love the artwork on them, when you put them in a binder page or lay them out together like in the scan at the top of this post they just scream for your attention in a way that few other baseball cards are capable of.

I got a few cool players of note in the lot.  Some highlights include

 Juzo Sanada, a Hall of Fame pitcher for Taiyo (a predecessor of today's Baystars).  He has an odd claim to fame stemming from his 1950 season.  He set a lot of "bad" pitching records that year - giving up the most runs (202), most earned runs (163) and most hits (422) of any pitcher in history.  Yet he won the very "first" Central League Eiji Sawamura award that year, winning an astounding 39 games despite a somewhat high 3.05 ERA.

His claim to being the first Central League Eiji Sawamura award is complicated by the fact that the award had been given out to other pitchers in the previous 3 seasons.  But during those seasons it was given to the top pitcher in all of NPB.  From 1950 until 1989 it was only given to the top pitcher in the Central League, hence his being the "first" to win the Central League exclusive version of the award.  Takehiko Bessho pitching for the Pacific League Nankai Hawks had won the real first award in 1947 and it wasn't until Hideo Nomo won it in 1990 that another Pacific League pitcher was so honored.

 Shigeru Chiba is another Hall of Famer, a popular second baseman for the Giants in the 40s and 50s. His career counting statistics don't scream Hall of Famer, though he was selected to the Best Nine 7 times, a record for second basemen (later matched by Morimichi Takagi) and he has some odd records like having hit 39 home runs in a row between 1950 and 1954 that all went to right field.

He wasn't a power hitter (96 career home runs), but I do like the way this card makes him look like a real slugger with the explosive clouds emanating from where he connected with the ball!

He is also known for having batted alongside Wally Yonamine in the Giants lineup and being one of the American's best friends who helped him adjust to life in NPB.

Takeshi Doigaki isn't a Hall of Famer, but he was a very popular catcher for the Hanshin Tigers in the 1940s and 1950s and appears in a lot of sets from this era.  He was a perennial Best Nine winner during the late 40s and early 50s.  I love the look of this card.

Anyway, just a few "stuff I recently got" highlights!