1991 Japanese Mike Tyson Toyota Truck Telephone Card

It's Super Strong....piffff.  Back in 1991 Toyota paid Mike Tyson a crap ton of yen to be the spokesperson for their line of Toyota Trucks.  There was a whole advertising campaign behind it with commercials (click here for three of them), magazine and pamphlets....and telephone cards.  Telephone card collecting was in full force in the late 1980s and early 1990s and Toyota decided to use this advertising medium to capture one of the most iconic boxers and athletes of all time, Mike Tyson, with one of the most profitable collecting hobbies ever, Telephone Cards.  Toyota ended up printing three different versions with Tyson on them and this red one is one of the most common.  Anyone else ever run across one of these?

Have a great Tuesday!

1953 Japanese Sport/Celebrity Karuta - Sumo & Baseball

This extremely rare karuta set was only recently re-discovered after a few sets were dug up from old boxes and storage areas in Japan.  Karuta is an extremely popular card game in Japan, especially among children, and this set appears to have been aimed at that audience.  Extremely well-done cartoon drawings show various sports and entertainment figures that were popular in Japan in late 1953.  Given the fact that Yokozuna Haguroyama was not featured in this set and he retired at the end of 1953, it is likely that these were issued as a special giveaway in a 1954 New Year Edition of a Children's Magazine.  Among the people the artist captured were 11 sumo wrestlers, 9 baseball players, 1 boxer, and a variety of actors, actresses, and singers.  These cards are all hand-cut lending the thought that these were issued in uncut sheets in magazines and subsequently cut by the purchaser.  Here is a brief checklist of both the sumo wrestlers and baseball players:

Sumo Rikishi:

- う Maegashira Shimizugawa

- か Yokozuna Kagamisato

- さ Komusubi Asashio

- っYokozuna Chiyonoyama

- と Sekiwake Wakanohana

- ね Maegashira Matsunobori

- ひ Yokozuna Yoshibayama

- ふ Ozeki Mitsuneyama

- む Yokozuna Azumafuji

- れ Sekiwake Tokitsuyama

- わ Ozeki Tochinishiki

Baseball Players:

- い Chusuke Kizuka

- こ Michio Nishizawa

- せ Takahiko Bessho

- そ Tetsuharu Kawakami

- た Fumio Fujimura

- て Hiroshi Oshita

- ま Futoshi Nakanishi

- み Kaoru Betto

- る Susumu Yuki

Have a great week and saynonara!

1987 Mike Tyson Japanese Bromide Card

About 5 years or so, I managed to collect, catalogue, and checklist the entire 180-card Japanese World Boxing Magazine cards from 1996-1999 and documented it here.  This set has Manny Pacquiao's rookie card in it as well as dozens of other boxers that only have cards in this set.  I still am not aware of the checklist being in Japanese yet so this was an extremely rewarding challenge.  At the time, I also knew of the bromides that World Boxing had done from ~1982-1990, but had never tried collecting any of them.  I am not sure how many of the bromides there are in the entire set and I am not sure I plan on collecting them all, but I wanted to pick up the earliest one that I knew of that features Mike Tyson.  I managed to snag this August 1987 one at a good deal and took a chance.  It is Card #64 and features Mike Tyson in his prime.  These bromides are rather large at 6.5" x 10" and were affixed inside the magazine so you'd have to cut them out which looks to be very challenging.  My bromide was already cut, albeit not very well, so I didn't have to face this daunting task.  I just might get the bug and try to at least checklist what I can.