1974 Calbee Frank Howard cards

There's a great blog out there called Cards That Never Were that creates custom cards using old card designs.  What I mean by that is that the guy behind it will create cards that he felt were missing from classic card sets, usually Topps.  For example, he recently had a series of posts regarding Chris Short, a Phillies pitcher from the 1960's who was missing from the pre-1967 Topps sets.  He created cards of Short for the 1959-1966 Topps sets.

I've known about his blog for a while but I just discovered the other day that he had done a custom card for Frank Howard in the style of the magenta bordered 1975/76 Calbee cards.  (Howard had signed with the Taiheiyo Club Lions in 1974 but got injured in his first at bat on Opening Day and retired.)  It's a cool looking card but I'm going to nit-pick it for a couple of reasons.  The first is that since Howard did not play in Japan in 1975 or 1976, he would not have had a card in the 1975/76 Calbee set.  The second reason is that Howard actually had two cards in the 1974/75 Calbee set.  In fact, the picture used in the custom 1975/76 card is from one of those cards.

I don't have any of the Howard cards, but I was poking around on Yahoo Japan Auctions and I found one of each card up for auction.  Here's the front and back of card #70:

Engel's 7th Edition lists the card at $300.  It's starting auction bid is 15,000 yen (~$150).

Here's the front and back of another card (#127):

Engel lists this one at $900.  The auction is starting at 70,000 yen (~$700).  I won't swear to it, but I suspect that this card is the highest price listed for a regular issue Calbee card in Engel.

UPDATE:  Scott Kaneko sent along some information from Sports Card Magazine #100, which had a complete list and price guide for all the Calbee cards since 1973(!).  Card #70 is listed at 25000 yen (~$250) and #127 is listed at 50000 yen (~$500).  Scott said "In my opinion, this guide is more accurate than Engel’s price guide, however, for the high priced cards, I usually divide by two to get the “true” value [ i.e. what you can sell the card, if you are lucky, on ebay or some other auction site]."

Scott also mentioned that the two highest priced Calbee cards in SCM were #s 210 and 211 from the 1973 set.  They're both of Wally Yonamine and are listed at 90000 yen (~$900).  The Vintage Edition of Engel has them at $600.

And just to update the Engel listings for the two cards, the Vintage edition still has #70 at $300 but #127 is now listed at $1200.