Vintage Baseball Shampoo

 

A guy from Hiroshima was selling a few of the regionally issued cards of Carp players from the 1975-76-77 Calbee set on Yahoo Auctions the other day so I put some bids on a few (and won two of them yesterday, the set inches closer to completion).  

While perusing his stuff I noticed he had an interesting item that was getting a lot of attention: an unopened bottle of children's shampoo featuring members of the 1975 (I think) Hiroshima Carp on it.

The red characters immediately below the players say Akaheru Gundan, which means "Red Helmet Squad".  The Carp had changed their team color to red in 1973 and in the mid-70s that was a popular nickname for the team.  It helped that they were a good team too, winning the CL title in 1975 (though losing to the Braves in the Nippon Series).  I need to brush up my 1970s Carp facial recognition skills, I recognize Koji Yamamoto and Sachio Kinugasa on there but will have to go through some photos to figure out the others.

 The shampoo itself was put out by a company called Sunstar and contained 200ml of shampoo. Other than that I don't know anything about it. The lot also contained what looks like a bottle opener.

Since I'm not a Carp fan, nor a shampoo collector, I didn't bid on this. It did attract 5 bids though and sold for 1300 Yen (about 10$ US).  

Card collectors are fond of jokingly reminding each other "not to eat the gum" when we buy old wax packs of cards.  I wonder if shampoo collectors jokingly remind each other "not to wash your kid's hair with this" when they buy old bottles of children's shampoo.  

I'd like to think that they do. 

Still Plugging Away at the Monster

I haven't posted about it in a few months, but I'm still plugging away at my 1975-76-77 Calbee "Monster" set.  By "plugging away" I mean adding to it at a rate of 1-2 cards per month.  I'm a little over 400 short of completing the 1472 card set, so that puts me on a pace to finish it in about 2035 or so.

I added a couple worthy of note the other day though, the above cards of hall of famer Koji Yamamoto and Gail Hopkins.  Both cards are from the rare regional series ("Defending the Lead") which was only released in Hiroshima and feature images from Hiroshima Carp games during the 1975 season.  Both of these (cards 167 and 176) were from the same game, played August 26, 1975 against the Yakult Swallows in Okayama Stadium which the Carp won 3-2.  Yamamoto's card shows him after hitting a home run in the 7th inning to give the Carp the lead, while Hopkins' card back describes him making a fine defensive play that allowed the Carp to keep the lead.

The cards are in near mint condition which is pretty rare for this set and this series.  They had been available from a seller on Yahoo Auctions for months but with a price tag of 2,000 Yen each which was just a bit too high for me to pull the trigger so they had been on my watch list for a while.  Then last week the seller knocked 50% off the price of each and I decided to jump on them!  This leaves me just 4 cards short of completing that rare series, which means I am almost done with one of the biggest challenges of completing the set (though the other Hiroshima only series is harder to complete and I'm still a long way from finishing that one).

Gail Hopkins is kind of an interesting person.  He played in the majors for a few teams in the 60s and early 70s, then finished his career in Japan with the Carp and Nankai Hawks.  He was a key player on the Carp team in 1975, hitting 33 home runs and being named an All Star.  After retiring from baseball he went to medical school and went on to have a very successful career as an orthopedic surgeon, a path very few big leaguers have followed.

Which is the Most Valuable Card from the Monster?

 Behold!  Hiroshima Municipal Stadium at Night, as depicted on card #157 from the Monster 1975-76-77 Calbee set!

I just picked this up and am quite excited about it because the card has a very dubious claim to being the most valuable from the set, and thus the key card to my years long quest to finish this 1472 card monster.

Why is the card's claim dubious?  Lets review the merits of the case.

Basically the claim lies with its value in my copy of SCM from 2010 (admittedly out of date but its the most recent I have).  It lists this card, which was from one of the two rare Hiroshima regionally issued series in the set, at 15,000 Yen. That puts it in a tie with the Senichi Hoshino cards from the Nagoya regionally issued series, also rare.  So perhaps its better to describe its claim as being tied for first place rather than solely occupying the position.

But the tie isn't what makes its claim dubious.  Engel lists it at $150, about the same as SCM, but it lists several other cards at $200 which is obviously higher.  The cards Engel lists are mostly those of foreign players (like Richie Schienblum's card #155 from the same series) or big stars (like Sachio Kinugasa's card in the same series).  So according to Engel, this is one of the higher priced cards, but not #1 in the set.

But even that isn't what makes the claim dubious.  I like the Engel guide and admire the work that went into it, but the prices for Calbee cards from the 1970s listed in it are completely out of whack with what the market for these cards is.  No way is the Schienblum card worth more than this one, at auction this one will easily fetch 2-3 times more than Scheinblum (or even Kinugasa), which is considered a common in the series (worth a lot by virtue of being in the rare series, but not the key card in the series).  So I prefer SCM to Engel on that point.

But....in reality neither of these is right.  The real most valuable card is, ironically, a different card featuring Hiroshima Municipal Stadium that has a photo almost identical to this one.  It is card #630 in the set, from the other rare Hiroshima regional issue (the "Red Helmet" series).

You wouldn't know this by looking at either guide.  Engel lists #630 at just $40, while my old SCM lists it at just 5,000 Yen, so both seem to agree that it is worth just about 1/3 of what #157 is.  But both are way wrong on that point.

Having followed Yahoo Auctions sale prices on the big cards in this set for a few years now, the big trend I've noticed is that the Red Helmet series that card #630 is in  is considered by far the most valuable of the entire set (which is comprised of 40 series).  Cards from it almost never sell for less than 3,000-5,000 Yen each, compared to cards in the other Hiroshima regional series which #157 is in, which usually sell in 1,000-2,000 range.  This is the reverse of SCM and Engel, which price the Red Helmet series much lower.

I'm not sure why the market is working like this, just looking at availability there usually are about the same number of cards from both Hiroshima series available (which is to say not many of either, I don't think one is noticeably rarer than the other), but the Red Helmet ones are definitely hotter and sell for higher prices. This is reflected in my own collection, I've been having more difficulty and am paying more money for the cards in the Red Helmet series than for any other.

So whatever the reason, the Red Helmet series are definitely now the most valuable series in the entire set, and #630 is considered the key card from that series, which likely makes it the key card of the entire set.  I'm still looking for it and expect it will be the card I have to shell out the most for in the entire set.

 But anyway, back to the card I actually do have.  While #157 isn't the key card to the set, it is the key card to what is probably the second hardest to complete series in the set, which means it still has a place in the pantheon of major cards in the set.

Its a bit of an odd one, it is dedicated not to the game depicted on it but rather to the general topic of stadium manners.  The back says:

Baseball Stadium Manners

When Rooting for you team, throwing objects or jumping down onto the field of play is not right.  Even when a player from an opposing team makes a fine play we should all clap.

I'm not sure that Japanese fans need to be admonished like this given that their stadium etiquette is legendary around the world, but there you have it.  Come to think of it, perhaps their etiquette is so legendary because they get reminded to be polite so often that they even dedicate baseball cards to it.  So maybe all those nicely-tidied-up-after-the-game-in-which-a-Japanese-team-played World Cup and Olympic Stadiums over the years have this card to thank for that.  

I got a pretty decent bargain on this, I only paid about $20 with shipping for it.  The cheap price is explained by the back, which has a little pen mark if you look closely.  Otherwise it probably would have sold for quite a bit more.  

This also demonstrates why the 1975-76-77 set is do-able despite its size.  You will never find the key cards from the other Calbee sets from the 1970s for $20 no matter how hard you look.  The key cards from those sets will run you into the hundreds or thousands of dollars even in lower grade condition.  But the 75-76-77 set are still kind of obtainable!

1975-76 Calbee Red Helmet Fight and Defend Series?

I reached another major milestone with my 1975-76 Calbee set today with the addition of the above card, #636 featuring a gaggle of Hiroshima Carp players and their manager on the mound.

This card is a milestone for me since its the first card from the 赤ヘル攻防シリーズ series which runs from cards 609 to 644 and was only issued in Hiroshima. I'm not sure how to translate the title of the series as it provides the perfect demonstration of why when you read English that has been translated directly from Japanese it often sounds very awkward.  The first part of the title can be cleanly translated as "Red helmets" and the last part as "series", but the middle 攻防 translates into "offence and defence" or maybe "fight and defend" which as you can see can be written with just two characters in Japanese but requires several words in English.  "Red Helmet Fight and Defend Series" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue in English but I guess it will have to do.

 I have had some luck in getting cards from the other two regional issues in the set (one from Hiroshima, the other Nagoya), but these ones have been quite a bit more elusive. I have come to the conclusion based on my experience that these are probably in fact the hardest to find of all the cards in the entire set.  

This is contrary to what my copy of Sports Card Magazine (which is a few years old now) suggests as it lists these as the cheapest of the three regionals (commons at 5,000 Yen each, compared to 7,000 and 8,000 for the other two series).  While all of the regional issues are hard to find, singles from this series seem to pop up about half as often on Yahoo Auctions and get higher prices than from the other two. I paid 2000 Yen for this one, which is the cheapest I've seen a card from this series go for, while I've been able to get cards from the other two (commons at least) in the 1,000 to 1500 Yen range.  The 40th series in the set (cards 1400 and up) are also hard to find despite not being regional issues, but I've been getting singles for them in the 500 to 1000 Yen range so they are a bit cheaper.

Anyway, it looks like cards from this series are likely going to be among the last I find for the set, which is coming along nicely.  I've added a few dozen singles from the easier to find series so far this year and I think I must be at around 1,000 cards out of 1472 so far, though I haven't counted!

Some Holy Grails for my 1975-76 Calbee Set!

My 1975-76 Calbee project took another major step closer to realization last week with the addition of the 9 cards pictured above.  These are all from the rare series running from #145 to 180 under the title "Defending the lead series" which depict players from the Hiroshima Carp in various games down the stretch in the 1975 season (these were issued in 1975 so that is actually impressive as I noted in a previous post on another series from the set).

I already had a couple of cards of Sachio Kinugasa from this same series so these bring my total to 11.  The cards are rare because they are one of the regional issues that Calbee used to put out in the 70s, these ones being sold exclusively in Hiroshima (which compared to Tokyo or even Osaka is not a particularly big city).  There are three regionally issued series in the 1975-76 Calbee set which is one of the major stumbling blocks to putting a full set together (the others are a Chunichi Dragons set from 37-72 and another Hirohsima set from 609-644): at any given time most of these cards are not available for sale on Yahoo Auctions (or any other online source). Sports Card Magazine lists the commons from this series at 7000 Yen each, and one of the most expensive cards in the set (#157 featuring Hiroshima Municipal Stadium) is in this series.

I think I was very fortunate to find these.  A seller on Yahoo Auctions from Hiroshima put these beauties up for auction with starting bids of 1,000 Yen each.  I put a bid on all of them and they slid under everyone else's radar and I won them without any other bids being put in!  I love it when a plan comes together like that. Condition wise they are all OK for me, light corner wear on most but no creases or major damage, perfect for the mid grade collector!

It was so satisfying sliding these babies into their respective slots on the 9 pocket pages reserved for them.  Those pages had looked so empty, but now they are almost 1/3 full, which is respectable.  I only have a couple of the Chunichi regional issues and none of the other Hiroshima ones, so I'm now going to be on the hunt for those (and more of these)!

On the downside though....I just blew almost $100 on 9 cards which represent less than 1% of the total number of cards in this set.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is getting expensive.