Sunday, March 2, 2014

550 Calbee cards from the 1970s

Sadly these are not mine.

I was just browsing on Yahoo Auctions and came across this listing.  550 Calbee cards from the 1970s.  The current bid is up to 15,500 yen (about $160) and I expect it will go way higher than that by the time it is finished.  According to the description there are a few doubles and the condition varies, though the ones in the picture look pretty good.

I have never seen so many vintage Calbees in a big pile like that before, so I thought it was kind of impressive.  Calbees from the 1970s usually sell only 1 or 2 at a time on Yahoo Auctions, I`ve never seen a lot of more than 50  before.

If I had the money to spend I would love to bid on these because the per-card price will probably end up being pretty reasonable and I would LOVE to be able to flip through those.  My collection is sadly pretty short on Calbees  from the 1970s, I only have about a dozen or so cards from that era.  I`m guessing this will go for at least 50,000 yen, in which case it would blow my baseball card budget for pretty much the whole year in one go, so I`ll have to give it a miss!

Also as a side note there is something I really love about what the seller did with this photo.  I don`t know if it was intentional or not.  1970s and 80s Calbee sets are notorious for being overloaded with Giants players.  In some sets the Giants almost have as many cards as all the other teams combined. 

Notice that the photo has 8 cards arranged on top and not a single one of them is a Giants player!  This guy might be a fellow anti-Giant!  Or it could just be coincidence, but I think not.

2 comments:

  1. A few years back I was able to pick up a lot of 138 1973-1976 Calbees off Ebay for $240. That's a lot more than I usually spend at one time but I had just gotten my annual bonus from my company and my wife urged me to treat myself.

    This look like a much sweeter deal but I'll have to pass on it as well.

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  2. That is a pretty good deal at less than $2 per card! It must have been a lot of fun to go through those!

    This one actually just ended a couple hours ago, going for a little more than 60,000 yen (over $600US) so it wasn`t a bad deal for whoever got it. Maybe someday another like it will come along when I have a bit of money to spend!

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