Japanese HOF Project

[Jeff Alcorn]

Hi,

I have enjoyed following this series very much, and have a few notes that might be helpful (I hope)-

1973 were not Calbee's first cards, they actually produced some in the early 1950s that are quite difficult to get (I don't have any).

On Keith's Katsuya Nomura card from 1958, the other player wearing #5 that is greeting Nomura at home plate is not Katsuya (that is Nomura's first name) but outfielder Yoshio Anabuki. Anabuki later managed the Hawks and he also appears in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set.

Isao Harimoto played his entire career in the Tokyo area with the Flyers/Fighters, Giants, and Orions. The Flyers/Fighters were always in Tokyo until moving to the Sapporo Dome on Hokkaido in recent years, and the Orions were in Kawasaki which is in the Tokyo area.

The Koji Yamamoto card is from the 1976 All-Star Series and shows him scoring for the Central League with Pacific League catcher Katsuya Nomura in the background.

The Morimichi Takagi card cannot be from the 1960s since the Dragons first wore the uniform with the shoulder and side blue stripes in their pennant winning year of 1974. There are a number of anonymous menko issues from the mid-70s, and many of them were made using pirated Calbee photos that had already been issued as Calbee cards. The photos will usually lack clarity since they are photos of photos and will never have a printer's name on them.

Finally, I would like to make a comment about the cutting of menko cards. These cards that were issued from the mid to late 1950s through 1964 were not released as singles but came in uncut form in various amounts- 2, 4, 6, cards etc. The cutting was done by the purchaser, and some can still be found in uncut form. The cover of Gary Engel's 6th edition guide shows a display of uncut cards as they would have been available in a shop.

As an obvious result, the cards have various dimensions and can be found with wider borders on the sides or top, angled cuts, etc. As a general rule, the cards that were not imported to the USA in the 1960s tend to have less uniform dimensions and the cuts can range all over the place. However, the sets that were imported in the 1960s were carefully cut and are much more standardized in size and overall condition. They were sold in set form to collectors here and many remained together as sets for decades and were never played with by Japanese children.

The collectors that brought these menko cards here at the time they were released in Japan, along with the 1964 Morinaga Top Star cards, Fujiya Gum cards and the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf cards, were Bud Ackerman and Mel Bailey. Bud was responsible for the menkos that came here and Mel brought the Morinaga, Fujiya, and Kabaya-Leaf.

The Shinichi Eto card shown in the graded holder has the stamped number 9 on the back. Bud and his family cut these cards and stamped a number on the back of each card. When they sold the sets a numbered checklist that corresponded to the stamped number on each card was provided to the purchaser. Anytime one of these cards is found with the stamped number on the back it went straight from the shop to the Ackerman's house where it was cut, stamped, and bundled into sets of 40 different and sold to collectors in the USA that way.

The result is ,of course, that the imported menkos, Kabaya-Leaf cards, Morinaga Top Star and Fujiya Gum cards are usually in pretty good condition since they were never owned by the general public but were bought by Bud Ackerman or Mel Bailey from shops in Japan or direct from the producer (in the case of most of the Kabaya-Leaf cards). There should be no fear that this card was cut down from a ragged form to get a grade. All of the imported menko cards I have are in the same condition, and the cuts are quite uniform with only a few variances. This should also account for why the cards found by Steve at a flea market were cut so well- if they were some of the imported cards brought in by Bud or Mel in the 1960s.

I hope that this information is of interest, and please continue this great series, I love seeing cards I do not have and reading everyone's contributions.

Jeff