Thanks @ A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts! - Free Isiah Thomas Card

 A little over a week ago, Jon over at A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts ran a Free Stuff Friday: Anniversary Edition.  This was to celebrate his 5th Blogaversary.  I have not participated in his Free Stuff Fridays before, but saw an awesome 87-88 Fleer Isiah Thomas card that I could not pass up.  Late 1980s basketball cards definitely appeal to me and this was an excellent hook up.  Last week I just finished watching "The Last Dance" and the rivalry that Isiah and Jordan had was intense....two large egos, both skilled, and both destined for the Hall of Fame....I knew I needed this card.  It looks awesome in hand and I can't thank you enough Jon!  Good luck on the next 5 years with your blog!

Congrats - Sekiwake Shodai on his 1st Sumo Championship!

Sekiwake Shodai has been tearing it up recently and the extra reset he is getting during the COVID-19 Pandemic seems to be helping his sumo.  He just won his first Top-Division Championship today and looks to be getting his Ozeki promotion news soon (hopefully).  He absolutely dominated and beat everyone that was ranked above him and finished the tournament with a 13-2 record.

Here is Shodai featured on his September 2020 Fantasy Sumo Card and the next time we see him on a card he will most likely be an Ozeki.

I hope everyone had an awesome weekend and sayonara!

National Rail Safety Week - Be Safe Out There!

This week is National Rail Safety Week, a week-long awareness campaign supported by the Operation Lifesaver, Inc. non-profit.  This week is important as it raises awareness of the need for rail safety education and how to keep save near highway-railroad crossings.  Last year there were 2,216 highway-railroad crossing collisions with hundreds of deaths across the country.  As part of the awareness campaigns of past, OLI issued this 36-card set in 1993 with locomotives from the major companies and catchy slogans on the back on how to stay safe around railroad tracks.  In the early 1990's anything and everything was printed on trading cards and this set was no exception.  This "Limited Edition" set is a must have for rail fans like myself.  Remember:

- Railroad tracks are meant for trains, not walking laines.  Look, Listen and Live!

- Trains and games don't go together.  Find a safer place to play.

- It only takes your car about 200 fee to stop at 55 mph.  A train takes 8000 feet to stop.

- When you approach a highway-rail grade crossing turn down your radio so you can hear the train whistle.

Probably the most famous train-track movies out there has to be Stand By Me

1956 Japanese Sumo Magazine Card Inserts

We are well into our 6th month of coronavirus lock down and I sure hope everyone out there is doing well.  These are once-in-a lifetime, life-changing events so I can't complain about the relatively minor impacts my family and I are going through.  One thing that has affected my hobby of collecting sumo cards is the shipping of material from Japan now takes 2 months instead of 1-2 weeks.  Alas, the bright side is I often forget what I bought so there are great surprises when I get to open the boxes.  One of these nice surprises is this set of 1956 black and white bromide cards that was issued as a free giveaway to the purchasers of the March 1956 Sumo "相撲" magazine.  They are postcard sized with blank backs and came in this thin paper sleeve.  The entire set is 9 cards which represents the top 9 wrestlers at the time.  I have another set of these, but for almost 10 years I never knew how they were issued so I had originally cataloged them as a 1956 BB-Series (Black and White Bromide) set.  Now they are cataloged as a Z-Series (Magazine Insert) set with the designation Z563: 1956 Sumo Magazine Facsimile Bromide Set.  Here is the checklist:

Yokozuna Tochinishiki

Yokozuna Yoshibayama

Yokozuna Chiyonoyama

Yokozuna Kagamisato

Ozeki Wakanohana

Ozeki Ouchiyama

Ozeki Matsunobori

Sekiwake Asashio

Sekiwake Tokitsuyama

Stay safe and have a great week!

1985 Japanese Takara Transformers Menko - Checklist Update

About 4 years ago I posted about some 1985 Transformers menko I had picked up.  Gregory over at Nine Pockets recently asked if my checklist had grown any since he had picked up some doubles along the way and wanted to see if we could expand the checklist.  I had to go back and check since it has been a while since I browsed my collection and sure enough it looks like I have picked up a few since I last posted.  I've occasionally run across these on auction sites and I think there must be between 30-50 in the set.  Here are the ones I have along with the current checklist.  This set marked just about the end of the menko re-boom era that had restarted in the early 1970s and ended around 1985.  Before that the big menko boom happened from the 1930s to 1964 when it suddenly died off due to television.  Nostalgia kicked in and the re-boom era lasted about 12 or so years petering out in the mid 1980s when kids turned their attention to NES!

Cybertron:
- Alert

- Blaster

- Bumblebee
- Convoy (Optimus Prime)
- Grimlock

- Hound
- Inferno

- Optimus Prime (Solo Card)
- Perceptro

- Prowl

- Sideswipe
- Slog

- Sludge
- Smokescreen
- Snarl

- Swoop
- Trailbreaker
- Wheeljack

Decepticon:
- Bombshell
- Bonecrusher
- Condor

- Devastator
- Frenzy
- Glen (Crane)
- Jaguar
- Kickback

- Long Haul
- Megatron
- Mixmaster
- Reflector
- Rumble

- Scavenger

- Scapper
- Shrapnel

- Skywarp
- Soundwave

- Starscream
- Thundercracker
- Walter P-38

Newly-Discovered 1958 Japanese Baseball & Sumo Wrestling Stamps - Nagashima & Wakanohana

I hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend.  It is a blazer down here in SoCal with temps reaching triple digits all over the place.  Great time to stay indoors or head to the beach.

Back in 1958, the children's magazine Shonen produced this 8-stamp set of famous sumo wrestlers and baseball players.  It is similar to the set I blogged about back in July, although these have an indigo tint to them.  The highlight stamp for the baseball collectors has to be the Nagashima stamp that shows him as a baby-faced rookie, although the other three baseball players (Kawakami, Kaneda, & Nakanishi) are all HOFs as well (can a Japanese baseball collector confirm?).  For the sumo collectors, this set has all three of the powerhouse wrestlers of the era (Wakanohana, Asashio, & Tochinishiki).  A simple design on the front and blank on the back, these newly-discovered stamps are now catalogued as the Z582: 1958 Shonen Sumo and Baseball Stamps.

Thanks for stopping by and stay safe out there.  じゃあ　またね