1980s Gold Bordered Calbees

 

This is a cool card from the 1983 Calbee set that I recently picked up.  It shows Carp star Sachio Kinugasa celebrating his 2000th career hit and I just couldn't resist.  

It is notable for the gold borders which distinguish it from the full bleed photos used on most Calbee cards and I thought I'd devote a post to those 80s Calbees with the gold borders here because they are something you come across from time to time.  Some of them are extremely rare and valuable, others are just as common as any other card.

The gold bordered Calbee cards of the 1980s were issued in series in the regular sets (they are not parallels or any form of chase card) and are kind of the predecessor to today's Calbee subsets featuring things like title holders (league leaders) or season highlights (like Kinugasa getting #2000).  

Calbee only issued them in five years - 1983, 1985, 1987,  1988 and 1989.  In each of those years the gold bordered series are the highest numbers in the set, indicating that they were issued at season's end and their rarity (for most but not all years) is probably due to the same reason high numbered cards from 1960s Topps sets are harder to find - kids were losing interest in baseball at the end of the seasons so fewer were sold.  

If you ever buy a pile of random 1980s Calbee cards and find some gold bordered cards in them there is a 99.99% likelihood that they come from the 1987 set.  The gold bordered cards in that year's set are basically "commons" - they weren't short printed and are about as easy to find as any other card in the set.  I'm not sure why they are an outlier like this, but it seems kids kept buying cards late into the season that year!

In contrast if you luck out and get one from the 1983, 1985 or 1988 sets then you've got something worth a bit more on your hands, because all the gold bordered cards were in short printed series in those years and command a premium.  

For the 1983 set there are two kinds of gold bordered cards.  My Kinugasa (#675) is from the last series in the regular set (not entirely certain of the range, but cards in the high 600s)).  These are short-printed but not hyper-short printed so while hard to find they aren't crazy expensive (my Kinugasa set me back about 10$).  There are however 10 cards (5 each of Tatsunori Hara and Osamu Higashio) which are extremely rare and cost hundreds of dollars each.  These don't have numbers on the backs so they are easy to distinguish from the rest.  

For the 1985 set the gold bordered cards are numbered in the upper 400s (not sure but I think from about card #410 onwards or so).  These are all quite hard to find and expensive (starting price for the cheapest is about 5000 Yen for mid to lower grade cards on Yahoo Auctions and they go up from there).  I don't have any of them from that year and am not sure I'll ever even try hunting those down.

The 1989 set I'm actually not too sure about, the final series of them (391 and up) I think had gold borders but I've never seen one so I'm not sure.  This is sort of the rarest series Calbee issued during the 1980s and its almost impossible to find copies of them at all (SCM back when it was publishing wouldn't estimate prices for them since they were so rare).  

For the 1988 set they are cards numbered 306 to 329 and like the 1985s they are quite rare and fairly expensive. I have two cards from that series, including this Hatsuhiko Tsuji that I picked up just a few weeks ago:

These gold bordered cards are kind of a thorn in the side of us set collectors since most of them are so damn expensive.  I've completed the 1987s (along with the entire set that year!) but other than that I only have three from the 1983 set and two from the 1988 set and I have to make some tough decisions.  I'm almost finished with the 1988 set except for the gold bordered cards, and there are only 24 of them so I might make a stab at tracking those down, but budget constraints (I keep my card budget under 10,000 Yen (about $70) per month these days) are going to limit that.

One intriguing question I have is what happened in 1986?  Between 1983 and 1989 Calbee issued these every year except 1984 and 1986.  In 1984 though they did issue similar subsets, but the design of the cards that year was different and they decided not to put gold borders on them.  The 1986 Calbee set therefore stands out as the one year in that range where they didn't put out a gold bordered series at the end of the year.  Perhaps not coincidentally the 1986 set is also the smallest (250 cards) by far in that time frame, which makes me wonder if they just weren't selling as many cards?

Anyway, they are kind of a neat aspect to the 80s sets.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that the 1990 set also has a gold bordered series!  This was after they swtiched mid-season away from the 1980s mini-card size to something closer to the present size so it is the only year where you  have non-mini cards with gold borders.  They are also a rare series worth a fair bit.