New 1947 JRM 56 Menko Discovery

 

I made another recent menko pick up (from the same seller where I got the cards in my previous post): four cards from the 1947 set Engel lists as JRM 56 ("Circle K", owing to the K in the circle.  This used to be the name of a convenience store chain in Japan but I think the two are unrelated).  

I was really interested in these due to their unique red/green/white color scheme which makes them quite distinctive from other menko sets of the time.  

These are among the rarest menko out there, Engel ranks them at R5 (less than 5 copies of each card known to exist) and only six cards from the set have been identified.

Three of the cards I have - Hideo Shimizu, Rentaro Imanishi and Hatsuo Kiyohara are already catalogued, but the fourth (the one at the top of this post) is not and is thus a "new find".  It features Tadayoshi Kajioka, a pitcher for the Tigers.  Kajioka was a star pitcher for several years in the late 40s and early 50s. In his rookie year in 1947, when this card was issued, he went 22-8 with a 1.92 ERA.  In his second year he would go 26-17 (meaning after just two years he had already won 48 games) and led the league in complete games with 35.  Overuse, plus the fact that due to the war he didn't make his pro debut until he was 27 years old, meant that his career only lasted 9 seasons, but he managed to squeeze an impressive 131 career victories into those years.