Trade With Ralph

As I mentioned yesterday I made a trade with Ralph Pearce in August.  I sent him 60 or 70 of KBO cards and he sent me around 25 vintage Japanese cards.  Once again I think I got the better part of the deal - Ralph was very generous in what he sent me.  It took me a couple of days to figure out what everything was and there's a couple that I still haven't quite figured out.

Ralph sent me a bunch of old menko cards plus some more recent Lotte and Calbee cards (well, "recent" is kind of relative as the cards are from between 1975 and 1990).  I'll start with the more "recent" stuff:

1975/76 Calbee #345 (John Sipin)

1987 Calbee #280 (Hiromi Makihara)

1989 Calbee #1989 (Kimiyasu Kudoh)

1989 Calbee #30 (Hiromi Makihara)

1989 Lotte #45 (Hiroshi Yugamidani)

1990 Lotte #112

1990 Lotte #72

1990 Lotte #68

1990 Lotte #94

The bulk of the menko cards were from the sets known as "tobacco" menko due to their resemblance to the American tobacco sets from the early 1900's, especially the T206 set.

1957 Yamakatsu JCM 27 Tatsuro Hirooka & Tetsuharu Kawakami

1957 Yamakatsu JCM 27 Kazuhisa Inao

1958 Yamakatsu JCM 33e Tadashi Sugiura & Katsuya Nomura

1959 Marusho JCM 38b Kazuhisa Inao

1959 Marusho JCM 38b Motoshi Fujita

1959 Marusho JCM 38b Yoji Tamadukuri

1959 Marusho JCM 39 Masuho Maeda

1960 Marukami JCM 14c Yoshimi Moritaki

1961 Marusan JCM 12c Minoru Kakimoto

1962 Marukami JCM 14e Mamoru Zaitsu

1962 Doyusha JCM 55 Shigeo Nagashima

I'm not positive I've identified all of these cards correctly.  The Tamadukuri card is not listed as being part of JCM 38b in Engel but it's the only set that it appears to fit into.  I'm a bit amused that the card with Sugiuchi and Nomura on it doesn't identify the player on the far right.

There was also a round menko card that I was able to easily identify:

1950 JRM 14 Kaoru Bettoh

The remaining cards were a bit more of a challenge.  First up is this rectangular menko card of a Stars player.  This appears to be from an uncataloged set.  I eventually figured out it was of Makoto Kozuru ("figure out" is making it sound harder than it was - his name's in the lower right of the card) which made it easy to figure out when the card was made as Kozuru only played for the Stars in 1949:

Next up are two round blank backed menko cards that I think are from the same uncataloged set.  Both players are from the San Francisco Seals.  The Seals did a tour of Japan in late 1949 that was valuable in helping baseball reestablish its popularity in Japan after the war.  There were a number of menko and bromide sets that were issued to commemorate the tour.  I don't know who either of these players are although Ralph mentioned that one of them might be Lefty O'Doul which would be really cool.

The final card is a bit frustrating.  It's a 1960 Tachibana Seika card showing a Dragons player.  But there's nothing on the card to identify the player so I have no idea who it is.  There was a bit when I was thinking it could be Don Newcombe who played for the Dragons in 1962 but the time frame is off (and if it was Newcombe I'd be sending the card back to Ralph because that would be just a little TOO generous - Engel has a value of $2500 for the 1962 Tachibana Seika Newcombe card).  That "8" in the upper right of the card is a point value that could be used to redeem prizes.

So thanks Ralph!  I had a lot of fun identifying the cards.  It was a great way to spend time when I was recovering from my back surgery.