This is actually a karuta set, although it doesn't have your typical hiragana/katakana letter on the front. There are corresponding reader cards, but not in the auction I picked up. This set likely came in a magazine from 1956 as there are perforations and cut lines on the cards indicating the intent for a kid to cut them out of the magazine. There are 29 cards in the set including these 6 sumo wrestlers, 14 baseball players, 4 pro wrestlers, 2 boxers, 1 swimmer, 1 marathon runner, and 1 judo fighter. All of them are equally amazing in terms of image quality. They measure approximately 2.0" x 2.5", but I am not sure of the real intended dimensions as the set I picked up is somewhat hacked....but I love it since it shows that some kid back in the day actually held these and cherished them as well.
Kind of reminds you of the 1953 Topps Baseball set, right?
Whoever did them was a really talented artist! You can tell they actually put in some research to see what each person looked like.
ReplyDeleteThey are pretty interesting. The baseball cards are done really well too.
DeleteThose are a pretty cool find, I wonder what magazine they might have come from.
ReplyDeleteThe faces do indeed evoke the portraits on the 53 Topps set!
Not sure. Engel’s Guide has them listed, but wasn’t sure what magazine they were in, maybe Yakyu Shonen. It is listed as JK 24.
DeleteFrom my experience, Engel's guide is about 5-10x higher than what I actually pay for cards. Although great for checklisting, the pricing information is really useless. I think there is some self-serving going on there....knowledge is power I guess.
DeleteWow those are awesome! That would be some cool cards to search the auctions for!
ReplyDeleteI can't remember how I stumbled upon them. It wasn't one of my usual auction searches.
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