Package From Alex

I've been writing this blog for over 10 years now and the one thing I've discovered is how amazingly generous card collectors can be.  I got an email a couple weeks back from Alex who told me he had a couple of the short printed KBO cards from the 2014 Superstar Baseball Season 1 set that were listed on my want list and he would just send them to me if my address was still the same.  We had some back and forth and I ended up sending him a handful of vintage cards I had doubles of - a couple "tobacco" menko from the early 60's, some Yamakatsu cards from the late 70's and some late '80's Calbee cards.  I got his package the other day and he'd included some cool extras as well.

He sent me three bromide cards from the late 1940's/early 1950's.  The only one card I was able to determine the set for was this card of Shigeaki Kuroo of the Tokyu Flyers.  I'm pretty sure it's from the 1948 Maruhaku "Small Sepia Photo Bromides" (JBR 10) set.

The other two cards are of Makoto Kozuru of the Chubu Nippon Dragons and Kaoru Bettoh of the Mainichi Orions.  As far as I can tell both cards are not cataloged.  The Koruru card has to be from 1946 or 1947 as those were the only years the team wore the uniform he's wearing (and the only post-war years Kozuru was with the Dragons).  The Bettoh card is probably from 1950 or 1951 - it can't be from before 1950 since the Orions didn't start until then.  It could be from as late as 1957 but the bromide cards were less common by then.

He also sent me Tsutomu Wakamatsu's card from Ed Broder's 1975 "Top Stars" set (JA 4).  Beyond always being happy to get a Wakamatsu card I was also happy to get this card since I didn't have any cards from this set.  Here's the front and back of it:

And finally of course he included the two 2014 Superstar Baseball Season One cards that had been on my want list:

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-059 (Jae-Gyun Hwang)

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-067 (Sung-Bae Kim)

Alex is planning on sending me some more vintage cards in the near future in exchange for me forwarding cards for him to the UK (where he lives) so I'll be doing another post soon on some more really cool cards.  Thanks so much Alex!