I've talked about
NST some in the past - they issued four sets of cards between 1975 and 1983. Really what they issued were stickers that were meant to be pasted into albums. I had gotten
a partially filled in album for their 1983 set a few years back. Recently I picked up partially filled in albums for their 1975 and 1977 issues as well.
First the 1975 album - this set was dedicated to Shigeo Nagashima. I don't know the actual count but it wouldn't surprise if half of the 288 cards in the set were of Nagashima. His cards include a bunch dedicated to
his final game on October 14, 1974 and some showing Shukan Baseball covers. There's also cards of other NPB players active at the time as well as some cards showing major leaguers from either tours of Japan or the Giants training camp in Vero Beach, Florida in spring of 1975. Specifically there are a couple cards of Nagashima with Brooks Robinson and
Boog Powell of the Orioles from the Orioles 1971 post-season tour of Japan, and
Gene Mauch with Nagashima and
Tsuneo Horiuchi pitching to Ron Cey from spring training.
The album I got only has about 104 cards in it (and the only MLBer in the album was Mauch). The album is too large for my scanner so I took a bunch of photos:
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| Cover |
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| NPB Stars |
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| More NPB Stars |
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| Nagashima Retirement Game |
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| Training Camp (Mauch card is #189) |
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| Career Retrospective including Shukan Baseball covers |
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| Nine card puzzle of Nagashima |
The 1977 NST set was dedicated to Sadaharu Oh, although he does not dominate the set anywhere near as much as Nagashima dominated the previous set. The set contains 324 cards, only about 17 of them are for Oh (while 18 are for Nagashima!). The rest are for other NPB players. There is one MLB player in the set -
Henry Aaron appears on a card with Oh.
Like the other album, the album I got for this set had about 100 cards in it. Instead of being scattered throughout the set however, the cards were sequential - they're the first 99 cards in the set. Luckily for me, this included the Aaron/Oh card (#89). Here's photos of the album cover and all the cards in the album:
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| Cover |
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| NPB Stars |
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| More NPB Stars |
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| More NPB Stars |
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| Yet More NPB Stars |
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| More NPB Stars and Oh's Records (Aaron is in the center of the right hand page) |
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| Last Batch Of NPP Stars |
I think of the four NST sets, the 1977 one is my favorite since it has the biggest variety of NPB players in it. The 1978 and 1983 sets pretty much only have Giants players in it and there's too much Nagashima in the 1975 set (not that I don't like Nagashima).
I now have albums for three of the four NST sets. I'll have to keep my eyes open for a 1978 album.
7 comments:
Wow, those albums are great. I have a few cards of the Nagashima series but otherwise haven't gotten any of the NST ones. This makes me want to pick an album up though!
Always thought Topps was the originators of the sticker albums when it came to baseball. These 70's albums are awesome! I wanna find one of those Aaron/Oh stickers.
Great rundown and nice looking sets! I did a write-up on the sumo NST sumo set a little while back with my take on NST as a company...I'd love to get your thoughts:
https://sumocards.blogspot.com/search/label/NST
I was quite curious on the NST brand and did a 30 minutes search trying to research the company. I came up empty handed and really started examining the album more for clues as well as look at other albums from the different subjects. As it's written on everything, the sumo stamps (as well as baseball stamps) were manufactured under the supervision of Baseball Magazine Sha (SSM) and issued/published by Kondansha International NST Project Office. Kondansha International was the English-language publishing house of Kondansha, but there are no clues to NST Kikakushitsu (Project Office). So the chase was on and I went out and researched other kikakushitsu organizations. It turns out all the references I found dealt with the publishing world in the form of "Modern Project Office", "Parenting Series Project Office", "Kobe City Project Office" and "Neko Project Office", etc.... All of these project offices released a distinct set of publications. Clearly the NST Project Office had the authority to use their logo instead of Kodansha so my guess is NST was a division of Kondansha that was tasked to produce the whole series of stamp sets (approximately 15-20 by my estimate) during this era. Likely NST stands for something like Nihon Stamp Team, Nihon STamp. I'm hoping someone else will be able to weigh in on this as well.
those are neat.that's a cool find
@SumoMenkoMan - Can you read the right hand page on the last image for the 1975 album? I think it says something about a UK group being involved with the production of the albums. The guy pictured certainly looks like a Westerner.
Hi! I wonder if you'd like to get a complete 1975 album - the one dedicated to Shigeo Nagashima. The first one you have on this post. If so, let me know how much would you pay for it. All the best. Fran
My email kawligas@yahoo.com
Fran
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