Sadaharu Oh
 

I saw a request on the BST for Sadaharu Oh cards and was reminded that a few years ago I bought some low grade cards from my friend Rob F including three different 1959 RCs. "World Lifetime Home Run Record Holder" Sadaharu Oh.
I don't think I've ever shared these, pretty cool right?
Larry

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30272https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30273

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30274https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30275

Very cool
 

Great collection! Want to trade any? It was a good idea to get them as a group!

Whoa, love them! I've got some Calbee Oh cards, but no menkos.

I've got a handful of menkos and some oddballs. Here's what I have scans of at the moment


Attachment 447810 Attachment 447815

Attachment 447811 Attachment 447812

Attachment 447813 Attachment 447814

Those are terrific. A great Sadaharu collection. I collect some older Menko cards myself (mostly 1958-64). Interesting, I find myself much less worried about condition than with American cards of that age.

Also, I'd been considering making a post to get some help identifying a few Sadaharu and other cards. Hope you don't mind if I just stick the pictures in here. Maybe some Sadaharu experts could steer me in the right direction?

The other card looks like Kaneda (actually, I can't imagine who else it would be), but I don't know the issue....

Here's the JG1 Morinaga:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20JG2%20Oh.jpg

anyone have any sadaharu calbee cards from the 1970s? looking for one where you can see the back of his jersey with his name on it

The last card in 6 isn't Kaneda. Here's his name: 金田

You've got a really good Sadaharu Oh card there. The round one on the right is from the 1965 Giants Furikake menko set. Its extremely rare, fewer than five copies are known to exist. I have one too, I wrote a bit about it here:

http://baseballcardsinjapan.blogspot...-oh-cards.html

The pitcher card you have is of Seiji Shibutani, who was a team mate of Kaneda's on the Kokutetsu Swallows. Not sure what set it is from without seeing the back.

The other circular Oh card you have on the left I think is uncatalogued. I remember bidding on one on Yahoo Japan Auctions a few months ago, I think it sold for about 7000 or 8000 Yen (like 75$ or so).

The rectangular Oh card I'm not sure what set its from, probably a 1970s issue (very cool artwork on it)!

Hi,

The Swallows pitcher is Seiji Shibuya. He played from 1962-1969 with a lifetime record of 40-85, 3.71 ERA. He went 14-17 in 1963 and was an all star in 1965.

Hope this info. is helpful.

Jeff

My only RC so far (still on a quest).

Hi again,

After seeing Sean's post that appeared after I hit send on mine, I checked my 2 encyclopedias of Japanese baseball. One of them lists his name as Seiji Shibuya and the other has his name as Seiji Shibutani. The second kanji can be Tani or Ya. There were 3 players that had that last name from 1936 - 2004 (the years covered in my encyclopedias), and one lists all 3 as Shibuya and the other lists 2 as Shibuya and 1 - the Swallows pitcher as Shibutani. I would go with Shibutani since that comes from the Official Encyclopedia while the other with Shibuya is from a fan produced book.

It looks like (from the front of the card) that it is from the 1962 set JCM14e in Gary Engel's book. The checklist lists him as Shibuya.

Sorry for the confusion,

Jeff

Yeah, that is an easy mistake to make. Those are the same characters for famous Shibuya area in Tokyo so I think everyone reads them that way at first glance. For an online source, his NPB lists him as Shibutani:

https://npb.jp/bis/players/31033825.html

And since his name came up, here are some Masaichi Kaneda cards (Japan's only 400 game winner) from my collection (I have no idea how to make them appear right side up).

1964 Fujiya Gum
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Absolutely fantastic

I've been accumulating Ohs over the past several years. Love the variaty, and loved that most could be purchased raw in "collector grade".

My signed ball, English and Japanese... And his partner in crime, Shigeo Nagashima, 2nd from top left and top right.
Attachment 447929Attachment 447928

There are some beautiful post-war Japanese baseball cards. I am partial to the 1949 and 1951 cards related to the tours of the Seals and the all stars that Lefty O'Doul put together. I have a nice group of Seals bromides from 1949 of O'Doul and Arky Vaughan, who was in his final go-round as a player. I also have, somewhere in the mess at home, cards of Isao Harimoto (only 500HR 3000 hit guy), Masaichi Kaneda (400 game winner), Katsuya Nomura (the greatest catcher), Tetsuharu Kawakami (The God of Batting), Victor Starffin (Russian 300 game winner) and Nagashima. Plus, because it caught my eye years ago at a National, a giant bromide of Dom DiMaggio.

Sean, Jeff, and Nat: thank you very much. I learn something here every day!

With that information, it looks like Shibuya on a 1962 JCM 14e (brown bat on right). Thanks again!

Here are a few more for the thread (though some have been shown already). I just sent a bunch off to be graded, for better or worse, but will see if I scanned those earlier.

75-76 Nippon Ham Type 1. 3 Oh's and a Nagashima.
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Hi,

The bottom left card of the Nippon Ham cards is not Shigeo Nagashima, but OF Toshimitsu Suetsugu. Nagashima retired as a player after 1974 and managed the Giants from 1975 - 1980 and then again in the 1990s.

Jeff

Thank you for the clarification Jeff, obv i need to bone up on my Japanese reading skills.

1958 JCM 29 Inao

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...029%20Inao.jpg

1975 and 1977 tickets with Oh images

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ckets%20Oh.jpg

1949 bromide of O'Doul with Betto and Wakabayashi

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...akabayashi.jpg

1949 bromide of O'Doul and Hamazaki

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20Hamazaki.jpg

Thanks, that was a cool read.

Since I have your attention and you are much more knowledgeable than me, I wanted to ask your thoughts on the total populations of these cards.

For instance this 1965 Furikake Oh card. I have a copy (and am not a serious collector) and you have one...I'd be inclined to think that here are hundreds out there. Maybe fewer than five have been reported at some central forum or registry, but could it just be that vintage card collecting never had the same devotion in Japan that it had in the US? If prices make it worthwhile, I'd expect some enterprising Japanese dealers to start unearthing pretty significant quantities.

Also in this thread, the OP has a copy of the '59 pitcher-back Oh rookie card. I also have that card and saw another one sell at auction last week. Could it really be as rare as reported?

I don't mean to be flippant, am just genuinely curious as I've only gotten into Japanese cards in the past couple of years. My general opinion on this evolved from the large number of Engel's rated R5 cards that I've picked up in that time. Admittedly, there might not be much of a market for some, especially the lesser known names, but I find it hard to believe I have one of only four or five known copies of so many cards. I've found half a dozen in the last two weeks.

Anyway, hope you don't mind the inquiry. I'm not sure where else to ask!

Others may disagree, but I think Engel's rarity ratings are best thought of as falling along a spectrum from "these things are all over the place" to "these don't come up much", rather than as a strict numerical population report. There's just no way to tell how many of any given card are out there.

One other thing to remember is that there are a zillion different sets, many of which were produced in small quantities.

Consider this: imagine that there were ten million sets made, each of which is R5. In that case, finding some R5 card or other would be no big deal. (Although finding some particular one would.)

The real case isn't quite like that, but since there are a large number of sets (far more than American cards during the same years), getting some rare card or other isn't very surprising. (Although if you know of several copies of an R5 card, that is some indication that Engel's numbers for that card are off, which, as I said at the beginning, probably shouldn't be a surprise.)

Totally agree. In fact, I wrote this exact thing in an email earlier today. Barring a big tranche of a particular issue being unearthed, I think the Engel's rarity ratings are very useful as a -relative- metric. Was really just getting at the fact that the absolute numbers were probably not really representative of reality.

And your point about the number of sets is well taken, the math makes sense. That said, since I buy almost only HOF players (or those that I recognize, an even more limited subset) unless I'm building a set, I'm still pretty amazed at the number of R5 cards that come up regularly.

BTW, I've enjoyed your HOF collection thread as much as any I've read. That must have been fun. Cheers!

This is a good point and why I'm always careful to say "known to exist" rather than "exist" when mentioning Engel's rarity ratings.

I basically agree with what Nat says - its probably better to view those ratings as a spectrum rather than a statement of how many of a card actually exist. I don't doubt that Engel has an extensive knowledge and has done way more research into this than anyone else, and is doing his best to provide this information honestly and accurately, but giving such precise numbers for the rarest cards, particularly the top two ratings (R5 = 5 or fewer known, R4 = 10 or fewer) seems problematic given the limited knowledge we have of how many actually exist as opposed to just how many are known to exist.

Like with the Sadaharu Oh menko we both have a copy of. The guide says there are 5 or fewer known copies out there. But I have no idea if my copy is one of the 5 (or fewer) Engel knew about when he wrote that, or if it is a new discovery and I guess you are the same in that regard. So between us we might have just added 2 copies to the known ones out there, which could be enough to drop it from an R5 to an R4 but we have no way of knowing if that is the case. So its quite unreliable in that regard, given the developing nature of finds like that. But at the same time, if you interpret it simply as a measure of relative scarcity I think it is quite accurate - these cards are genuinely scarce.

Another issue which you mention is that we don't know exactly how many more of these are out there in Japan waiting to be unearthed. I think Engel's rarity guide is fairly accurate in terms of how many have made their way to the US market (where it is possible to keep pretty accurate tabs on the cards entering the market since there are pretty limited avenues). But one problem is that in Japan the market for vintage cards is still not mature like it is in the US. I'd say it probably resembles the situation in the US in the 70s when people were first becoming aware that old cards were worth something and stashes were still being dug up.

Evidence of this comes from my own collection. The vast majority of my vintage Japanese menko did not come from card dealers. I got almost all of them from general antique dealers who had no idea what they were selling. They just gather up old junk from estates or whatever people bring them, then break them up into lots and sell them. So most of the cards I get are being sold to me by guys who are also selling old kimonos, books or woodblock prints. The cards are therefore pretty much all new to the baseball card collecting market, which is not something you ever see in the US since everybody knows old cards are worth a lot. So finds of cards are still happenning right now. Its not by any means a daily event, these lots are hard to come by, but they do still exist and its definitely possible that within the next month I might find a lot with an R5 card in it or something, which will raise these questions.

I think the comparison that best illustrates this point is Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh's rookie cards.

Aaron's 1954 Topps rookie card is available in much larger numbers than any Sadaharu Oh rookie card.

But there is just one of them.

Sadaharu Oh in contrast has several dozen rookie cards issued in 1959 (I'm not even sure what the exact number is, but easily more than 20). Individually all of them are much scarcer than a 1954 Topps Aaron, but collectively I wouldn't be surprised if there were the same, or maybe even more, Sadaharu Oh rookie cards in existence than there are Hank Aaaron rookie cards.

That's very helpful. Thanks!

Hi all, I just found this post by accident. I did some searching and found that according to the top three TPG pop reports there is a total of 7,857 Aaron rookies that have been graded.

PSA 5638
SGC 1360
BVG 859

I assume there are plenty of others that have not been graded yet.

Although there are probably 40-50 or so different Sadaharu Oh cards that were produced in 1959. I seriously doubt that the total of all Oh cards would be more than the 1954 Aaron card.

I've been dealing with Japanese cards since 1989 and I think it was actually easier to find cards years ago. I would go to antique shows, flea markets and and various shops where I would actually find some cool items. It sure seems like things have dried up out there.

Back in 1993 I was on a Japanese quiz show along with Dan Johnson called "Naruhodo! The World" You can see some of the things we had in our collections.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fy0UiBlklXM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Wow, your collection is amazing, you still have all that stuff?

That video (which is so cool BTW) does a good job of demonstrating how little card collecting had permeated public awareness here (at least in 1993) - its neat that it took them so long to guess that the baseball goods you collected were cards (and they didn't really hit on that until the host steered them to it from menko).

That is a fair point about the Oh/ Aaron rookie card numbers and I think you are probably right that there are more Aarons based on that, but still the number of Oh rookies collectively must be at least in the thousands so I don't think the population is too far off in comparison.

Thanks, I still have some of those items, but most of them were sold off especially to help pay for my move to Japan in 1996. There always seems to be many more Nagashima rookie cards floating around than Oh cards. Back in the early 1990s I found some nice stuff in Nagoya as well as Shimokitazawa in Tokyo. I miss those days.