This is the same set that I have been working on for years and devoting a lot of posts on here to. At 1472 cards, many of them extremely rare, it is easily one of the most difficult sets of baseball cards in the world to complete.
As far as I know, only two complete sets exist. One is in the hands of a long time collector who has been collecting Calbee cards since the 1970s who was featured in an article in the Asahi Shinbun about a decade ago which seems to have disappeared from the internet because I can no longer find it. The other one was this one, which has been listed on Yahoo Auctions for the past three years ( I wrote about it when it was first listed here).
The starting bid on it has been set at 880,000 Yen (about $8,500 US) and somebody finally pulled the trigger!
This sale isn't surprising. When it was first listed I thought the price might have been a bit on the high side since the price of cards from the set was still pretty reasonable and I figured I could put the whole thing together for less than that. In the intervening 3 yeas I have been disabused of that quaint idea. The price of cards from this set has increased significantly and the cards from the rarer series in particular have become much harder to find (not that they were ever easy).
It got to the point that for the past year or so I'd gone from thinking it was a bit overpriced to thinking it was one of the best bargains out there and was wondering why nobody was pouncing on it. Of course my baseball card collecting budget isn't anywhere near big enough for me to be dropping that kind of money on cards, but if I was rich I would have bought this thing ages ago.
Anyway, now it is gone, in the hands of some lucky collector who with the click of a button has accomplished something that I have been slaving away at for 7 years and am still only about 70% of the way to finishing! Probably the next time the world will see one of these available for sale will be 40 years from now when my kids inherit my estate and start dumping all the crap I collect that they aren't interested in, assuming I live that long and that 40 years is enough time for me to finish this monster!
Whoa. Only two? Pretty sure there are more than two complete T206 sets.
ReplyDeleteTwo of these sets that are known at least, its possible that there might be more hidden ones out there but I couldn't imagine there being more than a handful.
DeleteI would say that trying to put together a T206 set is likely harder just because of the big 3. The 1975-76 set has a lot of rarities, but none of them are anywhere near as expensive as what the expensive T206s go for (as I guess you can infer from the whole set selling for 8500$)!
I dunno, Fuji. If you count all 524 cards, then I think there actually aren't more than two. That's still really cool. And hopefully at least one of your kids will collect cards.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how many T206s there are. I guess it would basically boil down to how many owners of the big 3 bothered to pick up the rest.
DeleteAnd thanks, I hope at least one of them does someday!
Holy cow. It does seem like a steal these days I imagine. Let's hope the story on who bought it pops up someday...maybe a US collector?
ReplyDeleteWe are all cheering you on with you completing yours...trying to make it #3!
I'd be curious to learn who bought it and what their collection is like, that is for sure.
DeleteAnd thanks!!
Maybe that collector stockpiled lunch/expendible income money during the pandemic and saw the opportunity...:-)
ReplyDeleteHe must have saved a lot on lunches!!
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