Closet Finds: A Box full of 1976 Yamakatsu Cards

 

I found a really cool thing that I forgot I even owned this weekend, which is one of the fun things about being an absent-minded, poorly organized collector.

I did a major clean up of our spare room over the weekend. Its mostly my kids' play room which means it is full of toys randomly strewn all about, but the closet is where I keep most of my card collection and it goes through these weird cycles of disorganization which go something like:

1) I find a few spare hours to haul everything out (boxes, binders, etc) and try to organize it in a sane way.  

2) Years go by in which I slowly accumulate new cards and, instead of integrating them with the existing way of organization, I just randomly throw them into whatever box or container I have handy (my supply of 400/800 card boxes ran out long ago so I use shoeboxes, etc) and just shove it onto whatever space I can find.

3) Eventually the chaos that ensues becomes too much for me to bear and I go back to step 1.

Anyway, while I was doing the major clean up I stumbled across the above cardboard box that I had no memory of and thought to myself "I wonder whats in there?"

I opened it up and discovered this:

A fairly sizeable horde (50 cards) of the big 1976 Yamakatsu cards! What an unexpected pleasure!

The top of the box still had a shipping label on it addressed to me and I kind of remembered (based on the date) that I had bought these off of Yahoo Auctions more than a year ago.  I was extremely busy with work/family commitments at the time they arrived so I didn't get a chance to open them up and appreciate them.  Instead I just shoved them in the closet intending to do so when I had the time and ended up forgetting they were even there until this week.

In addition to the cards the lot came with 7 new albums, which are pretty cool and I think I'll actually use them.

The 1976 Yamakatsu set is absolutely fantastic.  Actually I shouldn't call it a "set" as Engel actually lists three seperate sets.  I think my cards come from more than one of these (actually mathematically they have to, the largest set is 29 cards and I have more than that.  I haven't had time to figure out exactly which ones I have from which set, the cards aren't numbered or anything which makes it quite difficult).

The photographs are quite cool on most of them and being so big they make for great display pieces.  Its quite fun to sit on a carpet in a room surrounded by children's toys and, after clearing some space, laying them out like this.

Anyway, this was a kind of nice win for my weekend.  Do any of you collectors have similar stories of finding really cool things in your collection that you had forgotten you even owned?