Tuesday, February 21, 2023

History Of Calbee 10.1 - More Redemption Cards

Sean had left a comment on the post I did yesterday regarding the premium cards available from Calbee as either redemption card prizes or boxed sets available from other retailers in which he mentioned that he'd never seen any Calbee redemption cards from the 1980s.  I replied that it was interesting that there didn't seem to be any information out there about what the redemption cards looked like between 1981 (one year after Calbee stopped doing the "home run" cards for redemption cards and the late 90's when know they were doing the "Lucky" cards.

I took a quick look at some of my early 90's Calbee cards and realized that I had a couple redemption cards.  I hadn't realized what these were when I originally got them - I thought they were something like the information or advertisement cards that BBM used to include in their packs.  But when I looked at them again this morning, I realized what they actually were.

I had two from the 1993 set.  Here's what both fronts look like:



From this photo from the Perfect Guide we can see that the same artwork on the cards appeared on the bags of chips:


The backs of the two cards were identical so I only scanned one of them:


According to the Google translation of the back, sending in three of these (well, three of the corners you're supposed to cut off of each card) will net you a card album while sending just one in will get you a "bromide with photo stand" - one of what we've been referring to as the "Big" cards.  Apparently you got to pick which player you wanted from a list on the bag - I wonder if that had any effect on what cards are out there in the market.  Were there fewer cards of less popular players released?  Or did those cards get sent to people who requested the more popular players after their cards were all gone?

I don't remember how I got these cards because I don't remember how many 1993 Calbee packs I've opened - it must have been at least one because I have a wrapper but I don't know how many of the ten cards from the set I have came from unopened packs.  I know that I pulled this next redemption card from a pack because I remember being disappointed to get it - it's from the relatively rare 1994 Calbee "Hokkaido" set (which was a regional issue that was available in Hokkaido obviously but also Kyushu and Sanyo).  I had bought a bunch of packs from someone on Ebay a while back and was not happy to pull something that wasn't a player card out of one of the packs.  Here's what the front looked like:


 And the back:


You were supposed to cut out the little square in the middle of the card.  Two of these could be redeemed for a copy of either Weekly Baseball or Weekly Soccer magazines while three would again get you a card album.

I sent Sean an email this morning telling me that I found these and he replied that he had one from the 1995 Calbee "Choco" set as well.  Eight of those would get you a soccer ball but the other prizes were the same as for the 1994 "Hokkaido" set.

1 comment:

Sean said...

Those 1993 redemption cards (and the bags) look pretty cool.

I can imagine your disappointment at pulling a long-since expired redemption card from a pack of the 1994 regional issue!