The name comes from the really long eleven digit numbers on each card. While understandable, its kind of a shame. I really like the artwork on these ones, which have realistic caricatures of the players' faces on them. Unfortunately that doesn't translate into an easy to understand set name, so "Many Digit" makes more sense.
The second card I have is Shigeo Nagashima, who I guess needs no introduction.
Engel lists three cards in this set, the two I have plus one of Futoshi Nakanishi. They are really rare (R4, less than 10 copies of each known) so there might be more out there waiting to be discovered.
In the meantime I just have to track down a copy of the Nakanishi to complete my set of the known ones :)
The registration on those is amazing. For sumo , circle or round menko are really hard to come by. Sweet menko for sure and I hope that you can track down the last one. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the registration is quite sharp.
DeleteThat is an interesting point about circle menko being rarer wit sumo, I wonder why that is.
Before there were high numbers, there were long numbers.
ReplyDeleteHa! These are ultra high numbers.
DeleteOdd that this set is from 1960 - I thought the heyday for these kind of sets was the late 1940's.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was one of the last of its kind.
DeleteI wonder if there was any rhyme or reason for those "long numbers". Maybe we have a mathematician among us who can decipher this riddle.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was thinking, too. If there really are only a few cards in the entire set, the long numbers become even more puzzling.
DeleteMenko numbers aren't card numbers like on American baseball cards. Indeed, on some sets the same numbers appear with different cards. Menko cards are typically covered in things that might appeal to kids: rock-paper-scissors symbols, trivia questions (see the "who am I?" cards), cartoons, and so on. Sometimes they were optimistic about this - some menko cards have math problems on them. And I guess they figured that kids would like long numbers too.
DeleteYeah, what Nick said.
DeleteI think the numbers are simply a game, whoever's card has the higher number wins. They could just as easily used single digit numbers but went with longer ones because, why not?