I'm working on a number of Japanese vintage sets - basically Calbee and Yamakatsu sets from the 70s and 80s. My biggest project at the moment is the 1975-76 Calbee set. Its a beautiful set, but also a nightmare to put together. Get this:
1472 cards in the set (#ed 1 to 1436, but 36 numbers have two completely different versions with completely different players). I think this makes it the largest baseball card set ever issued (at least in terms of how high the numbers go).
Cards were initially sold in 1 card packs attached to bags of potato chips, so the print run wasn't huge to begin with and unless you bought thousands of bags of chips it would have been impossible to complete a set back in the day. In the past 40 years I am guessing that less than 10 people around the world have actually completed it (only 2 that I know of).
2 series in the set were only sold in bags of chips in the mid-sized city of Hiroshima. These are insanely rare and most of them are simply not available for sale anywhere online at any given time (though they pop up now and then).
Another series was only issued in the (slightly larger) city of Nagoya. Also rare and hard to find.
As with vintage American cards from the 50s, they were just considered toys for kids so most either got thrown away or only exist in damaged condition today. The modern hobby really didn't arrive in Japan until the 90s.
And despite all of that, this probably isn't even the most difficult Japanese set from the 70s to put together!
I just picked up 9 of the Hiroshima regional issues, which puts me over 900 different cards towards the set. I figure it will take me another 20 years to finish it.
https://baseballcardsinjapan.blogspo...75-76%20Calbee
Anybody else out there putting together tough Japanese sets and want to complain (I know a couple who are, but I think we are a rare breed)?