Friday, January 6, 2017

New Set / Circa 1975 Boken Oh New Year Playing Cards

Getting back to sumo cards after a few other posts, I picked up these sumo card singles a month or two ago over in Japan.  Normally for these kids magazine cards I turn to the Japanese Baseball Card Checklist as Gary usually has most of these cataloged.  Surprisingly, this set is not it there, but these cards appear to be from around 1975 given the wrestler's ranks.  These trump cards (as the Japanese call playing cards) came in small boxes and different sets were inserted in issues of Boken Oh (Adventure King) magazines throughout the year during the January issues.  Likely there are 52-54 total cards in this set and I have three of the sumo wrestlers (Wajima, Takanohana, Kitanoumi) and one pro wrestler (Antonio Inoki), but there are likely singers, actors/actresses, baseball players and other famous people throughout the set.  They measure 1 5/8" x 2 1/8" and are printed on thin paper stock.  Anyone else have any of these?




2 comments:

  1. I've never seen these before... but they're really cool. It's not often you see non-rounded corners on playing cards.

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    1. There seemed to be a fair amount of these issued in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, but not many come up for auction. The square corners are interesting....I can't imagine they were very practical as playing cards, but a nice gift to include in the magazines.

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