Gold & White Sumo Wrestling Cards - 1959 Comic 9-10-11 Menko Set

Collecting Japanese menko cards in the late 1950s has a similar aspect shared with the current United States sports card industry...they both were/are a form of gambling.  In the 1950s, Japanese manufacturers would randomly insert winner menko cards in M-series boxes.  These winner menko were the regular white-bordered menko, but had a small stamp on the back indicating the level of prize you won.  If you happened to pull a winner menko from the box you could redeem it for an uncut sheet of gold-bordered prize menko.  The large, uncut sheets (4-8 uncut menko) were reserved for the top prizes and the smaller sheets (1-4 uncut menko) were reserved for the lower prizes.  These gold-bordered prize menko were included with the box when the shop owner purchased it from a wholesaler, but they were removed and displayed to entice kids.  As I can only imagine the amount of yen Japanese kids would plop down to try and "win" one of the gold-bordered cards.  Sound eerily familiar?  As you can imagine, these gold-bordered menko are extremely hard to find and quite valued among sumo card collectors.  Here are two gold-bordered menko from the M591: 1959 Comic 9-10-11 set, a non-winner regular white-bordered menko, and some examples of other gold-bordered menko with their original boxes.

Example of the prize gold-bordered menko.  These happen to be cut.



Example of the regular white-bordered menko.  This is a non-winner since it doesn't have a stamp on the back.