A few months ago I picked up
two uncut sheets from the 1958 Mitsuwa Menko set (JCM 129) which had eight cards each. There was some duplication on the sheets and I was kind of curious about how the cards were distributed on the sheets. Its a 16 card set, but thanks to the duplication my sheets only gave me 13 out of the 16.
Last week I picked up another uncut sheet from the set which is similar to, but slightly different from, one of the two sheets I had previously bought. Its the one on the right side of the above scan. Its almost identical to the one on the left of the above scan which I already had, except for one card.
Can you spot the difference?
The Nagashima/Yoshida card on the left sheet has been replaced with a card of Atsushi Horiuchi on the right sheet. The other seven cards though are the same and all in the same position. Weird, huh?
Another oddity is that despite the differing fronts, the backs on each sheet are identical:
So there you go. I'm very curious as to how many variations of these sheets there are out there and I'm going to keep on picking them up whenever I see them. Unfortunately that is not an easy task, the three I have are the only three I've ever seen and Engel ranks the set as R2 on his rarity scale, so they are pretty hard to come by (especially in uncut form). My curiosity is piqued though so I'm going to keep at it.
Engel says that the backs can be arbitrarily paired with fronts in this set, but I'm starting to think that that's not the case. I have the Aramaki card and it has the same back as both of the Aramaki cards on these sheets. Maybe he saw the Nagashima and Horiuchi cards sharing a back and reached that conclusion.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it turns out that these are the only two variations then it seems that Nagashima and Horiuchi would be short prints. (Or if there are lots of variations, then all bets are off.)
I think there is definitely a pattern that we can probably figure out if we get enough sheets together, which might allow us to also figure out if there are any short prints like the Nagashima and Horiuchi cards. I'm guessing which they say "arbitrarily" they maybe just meant there are multiple front/back combos possible, which is not quite the same thing but accurate if that is what they intended to say.
DeleteOh, and on the short print question, the Nagashima Yoshida card that is missing on the sheet on the right above actually appears on both of the two sheets that I already own, so its probably not printed. The Horiuchi card also appears on the other sheet too.
DeleteI would disagree with Engel in this case as well. The corresponding sumo set M583-1958 Mitsuwa Trump have unique backs somewhat of a harder set to find as well. Cool sets....mine come in both brown and blue ink backs.
ReplyDeleteOh cool, the Sumo ones all have the same backs then? Between the three sheets I have there seem to be a few front/back combos on some cards (though not all, but this is probably just because I have so few sheets).
DeleteThey do have the same backs, on sumo at least. Cool that you can still find uncut sheets of these. They must have made quite a few.
DeleteInteresting about the sumo ones all having the same backs.
DeleteI'm not sure how many of these were made, I've never actually seen any single cards for sale and the only sheets I've ever come across are the ones I own. Engel ranks them R2 which seems about right to me!
Very interesting stuff. I guess the Nagashima/Yoshida card and the Atsushi Horiuchi are short prints in the set.
ReplyDeleteThey might be!
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