Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Newly Uncovered Japanese Star Wars Cards -1980 Cosmos

The Japanese card market continues to be unvalued and a goldmine of cards waiting to uncovered.  One of the genres of cards were marketed in Gacha, or capsule machines, with one of the most famous companies, Cosmos (コスモス), producing a majority of these cards in the early 1980s.  There were numerous cards for all interests: Pro Wrestling, Movies, Idols, and Sports Stars.  Since these were marketed really as inexpensive toys or products, the quality of the material and card stock tends to be fairly poor and consequently few survive and they are hard to locate.  Adding to the mix the lack of any definitive checklist and you have a recipe for excitement, intrigue, and a thrilling chase of discovery.  This small, three-card set from the 1980 The Empire Strikes Back movie definitely didn't disappoint and I was happy to be able to uncover and document them.  Measuring 2 3/8"x 3 5/8", this beautiful red-bordered set depicts the three main characters from the movie: Lord Darth Vadar (sp), Luke Skywalker, and Yoda.  If you were casually glancing at the cards, you might gloss right over the コスモス logo in the upper-right corner as it is difficult to tell that it is written in Japanese.  Also, the only card that has distinct Japanese writing is the Darth Vadar (sp) which has スターウォーズ written in bold-red letter in the lower-left corner.  Beautifully cropped, this set is a must have for the advanced Star Wars card collector.


8 comments:

  1. Oh wow, neat! I've never seen those before (despite scouring Yahoo Auctions from time to time for old Empire Strikes Back stuff). I never knew that cards had been distributed through gacha before, they certainly don't seem to be now (having two young kids means spending a lot of time browsing gacha machines)!

    The red border is a nice touch on them, cool set! Good luck finding more!

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    1. Cosmos was a huge supplier of Gacha toys. Some of their stuff is pretty unique for sure. I could spend a fortune on capsule machines in Japan. Such interesting things to buy.

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  2. Odd that Yoda doesn't get a name label like Vader and Skywalker did.

    Epoch did at least one set of cards that was distributed in capsule machines in 2012. I got a couple cards from a capsule machine outside the train station at Seibu Dome when I was there in March of 2013. I tried to keep an eye out for them on my trip this year but I didn't see any. Cards that is - I saw lots of capsule machines. Oddly enough I saw a capsule machine with stickers and what not for the Carp deep in the bowels of Tokyo Station.

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    1. Gacha centers are insane. So many cool types of toys. Yeah, I wonder if there are other cards in this set.

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  3. Yoda + Japanese Trading Card = A flippin' awesome collectible! Very, very, very cool.

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    1. For sure. I hope to be able to track down a few more from this set if they exist.

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  4. I'm not a Star Wars guy, but those cards are quite cool. Even cooler that in 1980 you could just get them out of a machine.

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    1. The Gacha culture is an interesting one for sure.

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