I completed the first series a few years back but hardly had any from the upper series so when I saw this lot of them (all from series 2 and 3) going cheaply I decided to pounce. The above is what the upper series cards look like, the first series cards on the other hand look like this:
The lot gives me a good start, more than half of the cards in those two series. I had my first series cards in an album already so I added these to it, which creates a neat contrast between card #55 and #56 at the top of the page.
The rest of the cards from series 2 and 3 shouldn’t be too hard to track down, but the fourth series (which mostly has gold bordered cards which I discussed in my previous post) is pretty hard to find and a bit more expensive.
This set is now on my "actively collecting" list.
The 1980 cards were weird in that Calbee changed the size of the cards during the printing of series 2. So, as Nippon Baseball Retro points out, you can find cards from that series in two different sizes.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that the design of these is basically identical to the 1991 set. It's also very similar to the 1989 Lotte set - at least in that they feature full bleed photos on phone card sized cards with rounded corners. I used to think Lotte was ripping off Calbee's design until I realized that they came first!
The Series 2 cards were the first Calbee cards to have English on the front. I wonder if it was in response to Lotte's 1990 cards having English names on the front. I believe those Lotte cards were the first Japanese cards with English names on the front (not counting Broder and TCMA since they weren't made by Japanese companies).
That is a good point, I had forgotten about the 1989 Lotte set. Yeah these are so similar that one must conclude they were just ripping off the design (Calbee doing that to Lotte rather than the reverse...)
Delete