Surprsing Jackpot

 

With the new season here I'm back into baseball card collecting.  But I have no cards to buy in stores - stupid Calbee has delayed release of its set until May for some reason this year.  So I'm left to browsing Yahoo Auctions for older cards.

Last week I came across an intriguing listing from a seller who doesn't specialize in baseball cards.  It was the above pictured lot, advertised as "junk" cards from the 1990s.  The above was the only photo of the baseball cards that I had to go on, but the written description noted that it included:

1987 Calbee: 15 cards

1988 Calbee: 9 cards

1990 Lotte Gum: 30 cards

1991 Calbee: 27 cards

1994 Calbee: 134 cards

1995 Calbee: 5 cards

1994 Takara Yakult Swallows team set

I was particularly intrigued in the 1994 Calbee.  That is a fairly tough set to find cards for and is one of the few Calbee sets from the 90s (along with the 1992 and 1993 sets) that I don't have too many cards from, so this seemed like it might be a good chance to pick up a starter lot for that year.  But all I had to go on, other than the number, was this image of the stack:

So yeah, its got Hideki Matsui on top which is the key card from the set so that is good.  But what about the condition of the cards?  Matsui (and the 1995 Ichiro next to him) look OK, but that is no guarantee that all the cards in that stack will look nice, and usually when a seller describes something as "junk" they mean there is something wrong with it. 

In my experience on Yahoo Auctions lots like these are a roll of the dice.  I've bought some in the past where the cards turned out to be fine. On the other hand I've also had experiences where I've spent a lot on a big lot of old Calbees based on grainy photos and on receiving them disocvered that every card in the lot had writing or glue stains on the backs.  One time I even bought a lot of cards where every card in the photo looked like they were in penny sleeves but actually turned out to have been laminated.  That was frustrating.

In other words "Buyer beware" applies in Japan as well.

Despite that I decided "What the hell,I've hardly bought any cards in the past 6 months so I can splurge a bit" and I put a bid on it. 

I ended up winning the auction for 7750 Yen (about 55$ US).  Even for just the 1994 Calbees that would be a steal if they turned out to be in nice shape.

Would it pay off?  Several anxious and exciting days of waiting by the mailbox ensued.

Yesterday they finally arrived and I got a big surprise when I went through those 1994 Calbees.

To explain my surprise I must digress slightly.  The 1994 Calbee set consists of 144 cards.  But that year they also issued a famous 36 card regional set known as the Hokkaido/Sanyo/Kyushu set that was only sold in those areas (which you can read more about on Dave's blog here).  That set is much rarer than the regular 1994 set and common cards from it usually sell for 5-10$ each (just perusing Yahoo Auctions listings right now and there are only a handful available, starting from about that price range).  It was the first Calbee set to feature color backs and in addition to the 36 regular cards there are three cards of Ichiro Suzuki (#37 to 39) which don't seem to have been distributed in packs and nobody seems to know how they were distributed.   The Ichiros are incredibly rare (like maybe only a few dozen legit copies exist of each) and the market is flooded with forgeries of them.  

Anyway, when I got the cards in the mail and started going through the stack of 1994 Calbees I was amazed to discover that most of them (about 70 out of 134) were cards from that rare regional issue rather than the regular set.  And all of the cards (not just the 1994s) were in pack fresh mint condition!

Until yesterday I only had one card from the 1994 regional set which Dave gave me when he visited Nagoya a few years back (he lucked into a pile of them at one point too).  The pile I got yesterday had 33 out of 36 cards in the set so I am now only 3 cards shy of completing it (not including the Ichiros).  They all went straight into a nice binder!

I got pretty much all the key cards from the 36 - there are three Hideki Matsui cards and cards of Hideo Nomo and Shinjo among others.

In addition to the regionals I also got a decent pile from the regular 1994 set.  All of them were from the first two series (cards #1 to 72) and I noticed when adding them to my previoiusly owned 1994s that I don't have any from the upper two series (cards #73 to 144).  I'm not sure if this is just coincidence or if the higher numbers are rarer than the lower ones, Yahoo Auctions listings at the moment suggest there are more of the lower number ones available for sale, but also that there isn't much of a price premium for the higher numbers.  Anyway, I now have most of the first two series of that set complete (just 10 cards missing) too. 

The 1994 Takara Swallows team set is pretty cool too.  It had been opened but all the cards were there and nice and minty.

The other thing I was excited about were the 30 cards from the 1990 Lotte Gum set.  I'm about 20 cards short of completing that (out of 120 cards in the set) and was hoping that I'd get at least a few.  The cards were all in nice shape but I was disappointed to discover that none of the twenty I need were in it. There were a couple of 1991 Calbees that I needed but the cards from the other years were mostly doubles too.

As a bonus the lot also came with a pile of about 150 mint Calbee soccer cards from the early 90s (1992-93 and 1993 sets).  I've never collected soccer cards but these might get me interested and were nice to get.

So this turned out to be a nice purchase.  Every once in a while it pays to roll the dice like this!