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.  

I'm still alive!

 

I stepped away from the blog for three months there.  Everything is good!  Its just that my day job is one of those ones where after years of work your employer subjects you to a months long process the outcome of which is that you either end up with a guaranteed job for life on the one hand, or they let you go and your whole career is over in an instant on the other.  No pressure, ha! Anyway, I'm going through that now so I've stepped away from the blog because I'm too busy, but I've found a few spare minutes and thought I'd devote them to a little update post. 

Despite being busy, I'm still collecting, albeit at a lower rate than usual.  Here are a couple of updates on stuff with my collection.  

1975-76-77 Calbee Monster

Last week I picked up 7 more cards that I needed for my monster 1975-76-77 Calbee set, including the Sachio Kinugasa card (#510) pictured above.  These are the first additions I've made to that set all year and I'm really psyched about finally being able to fill in a few more pockets in those binders. 

My progress on the set has slowed to the crawl over the past couple years, something I've moaned about in previous posts.  The problem is that I've basically picked over what all the established dealers have for sale and so now I'm just waiting and pouncing on new listings, which only come up occasionally.  If you look on Yahoo Auctions at any given moment there are usually more than 2,000 listings for cards from this set so you might think it would be easier.  But that is for a set with 1472 cards, and most of those listings are of cards from a few of the easier to find series so there is heavy duplication of some cards and none for most of the others.  Within those 2,000 plus listings there are probably only 500-600 or so different cards available from that set, and the other 900 or so just don't come up for sale that often. 

I can also tell that I'm not alone in this situation because I'm always getting into bidding wars on those cards when they pop up, even for common cards in common series which just coincidentally happen to not be in any other dealer's inventory.  

The Menko Collection

My menko collecting has kind of fallen off a cliff recently just because of a recent market trend that  economists refer to as "Holy crap when did everything get this damned expensive???"

Basically the market has exploded here like it has in the US.  I think there was a bit of a lag and vintage cards didn't really start skyrocketing in price until a few months after they had in the US, but its happenned here too.  So while I'm still bidding on stuff that I would have won easily a year or two ago, nowadays I find myself getting blown out of the water and not even coming close to the winning bid on anything.  Especially Sadaharu Oh stuff is just no longer attainable in my price range, so I'm glad I knocked a lot of his cards off my want list when they were (though there are still a lot out there I would like to own!)

Anyway, that is my update. In all honesty I'm probably not going to have enough time to resume blogging at my normal rate until the above mentioned work thing-y is resolved, which won't be until later this year.  I'll try to find a bit of time here and there to post updates though, I find that my collection doesn't really feel complete without it being  blogged about!  

My 1976 Yamakatsu Purchase is Confusing the Hell out of Me

 The above is a box of Pro Yakyu "DX" cards produced by Yamakatsu in 1976.  As the red numbers near the bottom indicate, it contains 20 cards which sold for 50 Yen back in the day.  The cards are pretty big so its not a bad deal.

Open it up and you find a couple of bonuses.  There is an extra card, of Sadaharu Oh no less, pasted to the inside flap, so you've got 21 instead of just 20 cards.  Plus there are two albums.

The albums (they are the same) hold three cards each and are specifially "Oh Albums" for storing your Sadaharu Oh cards in.  As is so often the case with cards from the late 70s, recent HOF inductee Koichi Tabuchi makes a prominent cameo behind the plate in the photo.
Spill it all out and this is what you've got!

Its pretty easy to date the set to 1976 thanks to this card, which shows him celebrating his 715th home run (note Tabuchi again making a cameo appearance), which he hit that year.

 There are some other cool cards of hall of famers in the set, like Sachio Kinugasa:

 And Katsuya Nomura:

I like this set a lot, but I'm very confused about what set it is.  Looking at the Engel guide, I'm pretty sure it is the set he catalogues as JY1.  The checklist matches up nicely with the cards I have, the description matches them perfect and the Oh card Engel uses a picture of as an example is identical to the one glued to the flap of the box.

But Engel gives this set the nickname "Blue Box". Because it came in a blue box.  My box is green.

There is another set, JY1c, which is similar and Engel says it came in a green box.  But the checklist for that one is definitely different from mine (the 715 home run Oh card only appears in the checklist for JY1 for example).

There are a few other Yamakatsu sets listed but none of them match this one either. It has to be JY1, but again - green box!

In writing about the late 70s Yamakatsu issues Engel notes, accurately, that "these sets are among the most confusing issues in history" and also acknowledges that there may be some mistakes in the way they were catalogues owing to limited information.  I think my confusion over these would be resolved by recognizing that the JY1 "Blue Box" set was also released in green boxes.

Anyway, this is a cool set either way!

Sachio Kinugasa Rarities: 1975-76 Calbee Hiroshima Regional Issue

As I mentioned last week I am seriously pursuing the monster 1975-76 Calbee set as an active collecting project.  To prove my determination I present my latest pickups: Sachio Kinugasa cards #146 and 180 from the set.

These only get me 2 cards closer to the 1472 in the set, but these are important ones as they are both from the rare series that runs from card #145-180 which were only distributed in Hiroshima and (along with the other Hiroshima and Nagoya only regional issues) are the hardest to find and most expensive in the set.

The card designs are the same as the rest of the set.  Each card features a scene from a specific game in which the Carp defended their lead in the Central League (which is the theme of the series).  Card 146 features a game played on August 26, 1975 in which Hiroshima defeated Yakult 3-2, interestingly played at Okayama Kyujo, which is home to neither team.  Japanese teams often play a few games each year in local stadiums in their region which don't have their own teams and Okayama is right next to Hiroshima so this must have been one of Hiroshima's local series (hence Kinugasa in home uniform).  The image itself was taken during pre-game fielding practice.

Card 180 features a game played on September 13, 1975 in which the Carp defeated the Giants 7-1 at Hiroshima.  The card back also tells us that Kinugasa is one of the Carp's sluggers along with Kouji Yamamoto and that his dynamic running style is impressive to spectators.

This is the sort of hyper-detailed card - commemorating individual games - that goes along with a 1472 card set!

Tough day for Cancer

Its been a pretty lousy 24 hours in cancer related news around here.  Sachio Kinugasa, Japan's Iron Man who played 2215 consecutive games died yesterday of colon cancer.  He is one of my favorite players from the 70s so its quite sad to see him go.

I wasn't going to blog about this, but on a personal note my cousin's daughter also died of cancer yesterday, probably within hours of Kinugasa.  The doctors found a tumor in her brain about 4 years ago.  She went through chemo and surgery and they thought they had gotten it all, but it came back late last year and spread quickly.  They couldn't do anything for her and she died peacefully at home surrounded by family.  She was just 7 years old and the world is a much lesser place without her smiling face in it.

So if you have loved ones out there, go give them a hug and appreciate the time you have.

I'll return to regular baseball card posting that doesn't include stories of devastating loss from tomorrow!

Another Reason 1970s Calbee Cards are the Best that will Ever Be

Above are a few cards from the 1975 Calbee set (not to be confused with the 1975-76 set) that I have.  You have cards of Japan's all time hits leader (Harimoto), its top three home runs leaders (Oh, Nomura and Kadota), its Iron Man (Kinugasa), its most popular player ever (Nagashima) and one of its best pitchers (Yamada).  I didn't have one handy when I scanned these but if I wanted to I could have added its all time stolen base king (Fukumoto) to the group if I had wanted to.

If you think of the concentration of key figures in the Japanese game into one set (in fact, most sets issued that decade) it is really hard to fathom - almost all of the key career record holders in Japanese history are represented here since their careers overlapped (Nagashima admittedly appearing as a manager rather than player in sets after 73, but still there).  Its like having a set with (career contemporary) cards of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron,Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, Cal Ripken Jr and Mickey Mantle.


The interesting thing is that no NPB set in the future will ever come close to this because almost all of those records are now effectively unbreakable.  Any player who can collect hits, home runs, wins or stolen bases at the pace necessary to challenge any of them is going to be offered a lucrative contract from MLB years before that happens, so it is hard to imagine any player capable of doing so sticking around long enough.  The current active career home run leader is Shinnosuke Abe, whose career is already winding down and might not even reach the 400 plateau before the end.  Harimoto's hits record would likely have been obliterated by now had Ichiro not gone to the Majors and nobody else is even close.

So the 1970s in NPB are kind of a unique era in the history of any baseball league.  I can't think of any era in MLB history that comes close.  The dead ball era produced some pitching records that are more or less out of reach (Cy Young's 511 wins) and some non-home run batting records that will likely never be matched (Sam Crawford's career triples), while the 1920s and 1950s produced some of its most iconic figures, but the 1970s in NPB is a bit like if the top players in all those eras competed against each other and all the major career records that they set (as opposed to just a few) became impossible for subsequent generations to break. 

Fun Stuff: A big pile of 1985 Calbees

Among my favorite recent purchases has been a stack of 52 cards from the 1985 Calbee set.  This is one set I only had a handful of cards for so I figured this would be a good way to get a start on building the whole thing.

The lot had some beauties in it, like this card with an excellent in action photo of the Iron Man Sachio Kinugasa:

Or Randy Bass in those awesome 80s Tigers uniforms with the white helmets:

What surprised me most on receiving these cards (they were a Yahoo Auction purchase) was the condition.  Every one of them looked brand new like they had just come from the bag.  This almost never happens with Calbee cards from before the mid-1990s, especially not in big lots.  I had bought them assuming they were the typical somewhat beat up lot that usually appears (the photos were a bit out of focus and the seller, who doesn't specialize in cards, didn't mention the condition int he description).

This is what the stack (left) looks like in comparison to a typical stack of 80s Calbee cards in my collection (right):

One thing I really like about the 1985 set which sets it apart from others is that a lot of the cards have hand drawn artwork of the players that was sent in by kids on  them.  These were winners of a contest to draw the best picture of each player and I think it is absolutely fantastic that Calbee did that.  Not only are the color drawings a big improvement on the normally bland card backs of their typical 1980s sets, it is also quite endearing that they would do that.  Its something it would be hard to imagine a card company doing today.