Sunday, March 6, 2016

1975 Calbee "Star History" cards

Calbee released their largest set ever (1472 cards) between late 1975 and late 1976.  Ryan has done an excellent job of identifying some 26 separate series that the cards were released in although it is believed that the actual number is more like 40.  I wanted to highlight one series that he mentioned - the "Star History" cards - that appears to have been issued in late 1975.

The series contained 36 cards numbered 289 to 324.  Each card featured a color photo of the player along with an older black and white photo.  In some ways these cards resembled the "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" cards from the 1972 and 1973 Topps sets except that most of these photos showed the player with his high school or college baseball team.  There are a couple that show a photo of the player earlier in his NPB career, possibly with a different team than he was on when the card was produced.

I've got about a third of the 36 cards in the series (and by the way, don't assume that because there's 36 cards that there are three per team - the even division of cards between teams didn't really start until a lot later and keep in mind that there's almost no Calbee cards for the Lotte Orions until 1985).  Here are the cards I have and my best guess to the background of the old photos:

#299 Taira Fujita (Hanshin)

#321 Isao Harimoto (Namihana Commercial High School?)

#292 Masaji Hiramatsu (Okayama Prefectural Okayamahigashi Commercial High School)

#293 Senichi Hoshino (Meiji University)

#317 Tatsuhiko Kimata (Chukyo Commercial High School?)

#313 Toshiyuki Mimura (Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Commercial High School?)

#294 Atsushi Nagaike (Hosei University?)

#295 Shigeo Nagashima (Rikkio University)

#290 Sadaharu Oh (Waseda Jitsugyo Gakko High School) 

#323 Tsuyoshi Ohshita (Toei Flyers)

#302 Yoshiro Sotokoba (Hiroshima Carp)

#320 Koichi Tabuchi (Hosei University)

#297 Tsutomu Wakamatsu (Hokkai High School?)
Most of the high school names I've listed here are from Google translations of Japanese wiki pages so they may not be correct.

5 comments:

Fuji said...

1472 cards? Gotta wonder how many completed sets were ever built. Very cool cards.

NPB Card Guy said...

Just think how many potato chips it would have taken!

Fuji said...

I know... right?

Deanna said...

Isao Harimoto's high school is usually referred to as "Namisho". The word 浪華 actually translates as "naniwa" and means basically the Osaka area.

Sean said...

I love that subset, I have a few of them in my collection too.