Card Of The Week December 8

For some reason (probably due to him being relatively well known in the US) it has long been difficult for me to pick up a card of Victor Starffin that was issued during his playing days.  I finally lucked into one a few months back:

This card is from a 1949 set that Engel has labelled as "Yakyu Shonen Sepia Bottom Line Strip" or JBR 13.  These cards were issued as uncut sheets in the Yakyu Shonen (Youth Baseball) magazine.  If you look closely on the left side of the card, you can see the dotted line that separated this card from the others.  The magazine published a number of card sets in this manner between 1948 and 1961, including game sets that were issued pretty much every year during that stretch (except maybe 1954 and 1955).  This particular set was not a game set - the game sets have a section either on the front or the back showing what the results of a throw of one or two dice are.  This set (and the 1949/50 game set) included members of the San Francisco Seals who toured Japan in late 1949.