The 1979 Yamakatsu set is, according to the Engel guide, one of the rarest Yamakatsu sets and was one I didn’t have many cards from until picking this up. Its one of the two mini sized card sets alongside the 1980 set.
Judging from previous auctions on Prestige these boxes seem to go for 300 to 400 bucks when they come up for sale, but this one flew under the radar (something that almost never happens these days) so I lucked out and got it for way less than that (about 80 bucks including shipping). Having it fall into my lap like that I decided what the hell, lets open it up. The box has 50 three card packs so I figured this would get me a decent way to the full set of 128 cards.When you open the box up there are three albums that come with it.
These are neat and contain a checklist of the set, but are kind of useless since they were designed to have the cards pasted in them which I am definitely not doing.
Under that are the packs!
Each individual pack is stapled shut. These would have been extremely easy to search had there been any valuable chase cards in them as all you have to do is pry the staple open, look at the cards, then bend the staples back. I don't think anyone bothered doing that to these, but word to the wise if you ever see individual packs of these for sale online.
I had two opening options: rip the paper or gently remove the staples and preserve the pack. I opted for the latter.
Lovely cards! Here is Isao Harimoto!
And Sadaharu Oh:
And.....oh yeah, this happened with two of the packs. Very frustrating to get doubles in a pack with so few cards. Fortunately I didn't get any with triples, though that might have been neat.
Three of the packs came in a little plastic baggy. These ones had winner cards (regular cards with a stamp on the back) which could be redeemed for one of the three albums. Otherwise they are just normal packs.
It was a lot of fun opening the packs though I didn't get quite as close to completing the set as I would have liked. I got 76 different cards out of 128 total, so I am still 52 shy of completing the set.
The cards I still need to complete the set are:
3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 35, 38, 40, 45, 46, 49, 53, 56, 57, 62, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 97, 99, 101, 102, 106, 108, 110, 116, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126, 127
Nice Oh card,good luck on finding those singles.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot!
DeleteThat's so cool! Lovely set - good luck with the remaining 52. 52, 76, and 128 are all really nice numbers, too.
ReplyDeleteThanks! And yeah: nice even numbers! (though I would have preerred the "76" to be a bit higher and the "52" to be a bit lower!)
DeleteThat was super awesome! Thank you for taking us on the ride with you. It's not often you get an opportunity to bust open 45 year old packs.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I barely snuck in before the door on "being able to open a box of 1979 baseball packs without breaking the bank" gets permanently slammed shut. I imagine doing the same with a box of 1979 Topps, if any are still out there, would cost as much as buying a new car or something.
DeleteWhat a great find! It must have been such a pleasure to open these packs.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it was a lot of fun for sure!
DeleteHow cool! This is one of the few Yamakatsu sets that I've never gotten an unopened pack for. I have one of the albums that has six cards pasted in it - I haven't figured out how to remove them without damaging the cards.
ReplyDeleteOnly 76 unique cards out of 150 in the box really sucks though. It's decollation like that in the BBM boxes of the early 00's that convinced me to stop trying to build sets through unopened packs.
If you're looking for a home for your doubles though, let me know!
Yeah, a box with about 50% doubles is not a very good ratio!
DeleteI can definitely send you a few, if you've got a checklist of ones you already have just send it over to me!
Cool opening. Yeah, the plastic bag packs is almost a dead giveaway the box probably has not been tampered with.
ReplyDeleteYeah, its a good sign to see details like that being correct!
DeleteI don't know if you have to deal with flippers over there, but if so, it's nice to know that this didn't end up with one of them.
ReplyDelete