A day on the town with Fuji!

First off, if anyone ever has a chance to hang out with Fuji and Mike, take them up on the offer!  Fuji and Mike are super chill, great to hang out with, and have really good insights and conversations on sports cards!  Fuji pinged me a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in going to the Frank and Son Collectible Show east of Los Angeles.  Heck yeah I was...a quick check with my better half and I was committed.  Regrettably, I was unable to attend the Dodgers game with Fuji and Mike the night before, but hopefully my rain check will be good for a while.  As soon as I arrived at the show's parking lot, Fuji was already bearing gifts and he handed me these sweet Yuta Tabuse cards.  The first being a sweet 2004 Skybox Limited Edition #34/35 in PSA 9 (my scanner doesn't do this card justice).  This die-cut card is only the second graded card I own and a real stunner!  Plus he hooked me up with this 2004 UD SPx Auto'd Rookie Jersey of Tabuse #1809/1999.  Both of these fill huge holes in my collection.  Thanks Fuji!

Fuji also brought a brick of the Round Tripper Licorice....yum!  For those of you who haven't tried it, check it out.

Fuji also loaded me up with a bunch of cards in shoe boxes for me to look through and pick through before they ended up at a thrift shop.  I grabbed a few cards for my brother and me as well as a few cards for some fellow collectors before they ended up getting donated.

We entered and the experience was pretty amazing and hard to believe they have this show twice a week.  The show wasn't quite what we were expecting in terms of the number of sports card booths as they were swamped by the toys and collectibles arena, but I was able to walk away with these two non-sports cards for a buck.  The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and one of the most influential figures in military aviation, Gen Curtis LeMay.  I realized that I should have brought my NES game cartridge want list as I could have probably knocked off a few games as there were a good handful of vintage game booths.

We weren't at the show for more than an hour before we headed off to La Verne, CA to hit up a local show.  Fuji found a few goodies there and hooked me up with this 2018 Panini Status Yuta Watanabe rookie. Thanks again Fuji.

Seeing as how this was National Baseball Card Day we had to hit up one of the local participating dealers in the area and headed over to La Verne to A&N Collectibles to pick up our free pack of cards.  I'm keeping mine sealed, but Fuji surprised me again with a jumbo pack of Topps Chrome where I landed an on-card base auto Rookie Card of Jeffrey Springs from the Rangers.  I haven't heard of him, nor does it matter, this card will stay in my collection as a great memory piece of the day.

We still had a good portion of the day ahead of us so we ended up in downtown La Verne hitting up antique shops.  I snagged this really cool postcard set of US. Presidents.  They are hand-made with serigraph technology...which is very similar to silk screening.  Made by M.A. Sheehan from Topanga, CA, these date from the late 1940s to early 1950s since it still shows President Truman as the sitting president.  These are absolutely gorgeous both front and back.  A quick 10-minute search of the internet doesn't yield any examples of this set making me believe it is somewhat rare.  They are supposedly limited to 2000 sets and my set seems to be a mix of different sets as it has cards from set #19, #26, #27, and #303.  Would love to know if anyone has seen these before.

We ended the day with a quick trip to LaVerne Brewery where I grabbed a 4-pack of their Hazy IPA and Fuji threw in another 4-pack.  I wasn't counting, but let's consider ourselves even....as I mentioned before, Fuji's generosity is second to none!

 

I had a lonely drive home as Fuji continued to shoot photos my way of some potential new spots to explore in the future.  Thanks again Fuji and Mike for a great day....I realized we don't have any photos of all of us together.  Hopefully we can repeat this soon somewhere and grab that photo.

Undiscovered 1974 Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 Rookie Card

A few months ago I happed to be in a French antique market and ran across these TinTin comic books from the 1970s.  What intrigued me the most, besides being in French, is the trading/collecting cards that were printed on the back cover.  Every magazine had four 4 1/8" x 5 5/8" cards printed on the back cover meant to be cut out.  There is a variety of subjects from tv and movies stars, singers, sports cars, and motorcycles.  The one that stuck out the most is the 1974 Musicard of the Jackson 5 along with young Michael at the age of 16 years old.  My scour of the webiverse couldn't uncover anything earlier than this and there is another rookie card of Michael from 1974 made by George Bassett and Company out of England from a series called "Pop Stars".  However, there have been 34 of those cards graded and there probably are only a handful of these in existence...one of which is shown here.  So it looks like we have a new Michael Jackson Rookie Card!

There were some other cool ones of Roger Moore and Bruce Lee.  I see some obscure autocards that probably have some rookie cards of Peugeots and Renaults.  Here are all the ones I was able to find and catalogue.

Cinecard:
1974 - Raquel Welch
1974 - Marcello Mastroianni
1974 - Jacqueline Bisset
1974 - Roger Moore
1974 - Romy Schneider
1974 - Robert Dhery
1974 - Pierre Mondy
1975 - Karen Black
1975 - Isabelle Adjani
1975 - Bruce Lee
1975 - Jean Rochefort

Autocard:
1973 - Citroen GS Birotor
1974 - Lancia Beta 1800
1974 - Renault Rodeo
1974 - Minissima
1974 - Jaguar XJ 12
1974 - DAF 44
1974 - Lancia Fulvia Coupe 3
1974 - Ford Taunus 1600 GT
1975 - Ford Escort
1975 - Peugot 304S
1975 - Citroen CX 2200
1975 - BMW 528
1975 - Audi 100 GL
1975 - Ferrari Dino 308 GT 4

Motocard:
1974 - Kawasaki 500 H 1
1974 - Moto Morini 3 1/2
1974 - Ossa 250 E 73
1974 - Ossa 250 AS
1975 - MZ TS 125
1975 - Fantic Motor 125 Chopper
1975 - Malanca E 2 C
1975 - Hercules K 125 T
1975 - Moto Guzzi 850V California

Musicard:
1973 - Robert Charlebois
1974 - Nicole Rieu
1975 - Il Etait Une Fois
1975 - Salvatore Adamo
1975 - Nicole Rieu
1975 - Paul Slade
1975 - Laurent Rossi

Popcard:
1974 - Gary Glitter
1974 - Gilbert O'Sullivan
1974 - Cat Stevens
1974 - Jackson 5
1974 - Mike Oldfield
1975 - Alan Stivell

Pilotocard:
1974 - Jean-Pierre Jarier

German Flea Market Finds #5: Tobacco Cards!

Flea market season is getting back into full swing here in Germany and I picked up a whole slew of 1930s German tobacco cards last week.  There are some fun ones in this flea market find.  I picked up some more of the 1933 Gold Film Bilder Set (20913-5/6).  These are quite easy to find, but have some great early cards of film actresses and actors.  Some of the interesting ones in this set are Norma Shearer (1930 winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress), Lita Grey Chaplin (2nd wife of Charlie Chaplin) and Greta Garbo (Three-time nominee for the Academy Award Best Actress).

I was also able to pick up these 1933 Lloyd Flottenbilder die Welthandelsflotte (20247-4) (Translated as "Ship Cards of the World's Fleets").  Did you know the Titanic had two sister ships: Olympic and Britannic?  Here is the Britannic (top left) in all her glory before she was sunk in World War 1 by the Germans.  The Germans were forced to compensate England for the lose after the war ended and did so with the Majestic (top right) which was the largest ship in the world at the time she was launched.

The last ones I'll show today are from the 1933 Lloyd Reedereiflaggen die Welthandelsflotte (20247-5) (Translated as "Company Flags of the World's Fleets").  I pulled out a couple of the US Flags. In the upper left is the Matson Navigation Company out of San Francisco that is still in business today.  You are probably more familiar with their current logo. The upper right is the Goodrich Transit Company out of Chicago that operated a fleet of ships in Lake Michigan, but went bankrupt in 1933...right after these cards were printed.

German Flea Market Finds #4: 1990s Telephone Cards from around the World

Germany has been good to me with random flea market finds and this one in particular had me very intrigued.  Back in the early 1990s, telephone card collecting was all the rage across the world.  If you read old U.S. Tuff Stuff magazines from this time, they had more and more telephone cards in advertisements and in the news.  In Japan, the telephone card was insane with some cards going for thousands of $US.  Europe was not immune to the craze and numerous countries issued cards in hopes of enticing collectors.  Sadly, my son has no idea of the struggles to make a phone call from a pay phone when he is out with his friends....anyway, I ran across this German album at one of the local flea markets that was designed just for telephone card collecting.  The front has "Telefonkarten - Merkator Hamburg and inside are 5 plastic pages that hold 40 telephone cards from around the world during this insane collecting time.  There are German, Singapore, Irish, Gibraltar, Japanese, British, French, and other ones I can't figure out.  I grabbed a few select ones here to show, but I am really digging these and am hoping I can find more when I am out and about.  I mean, who doesn't love some early 1990s Hulk Hogan and Bill Clinton cards??!!

Did anyone else ever collect phone cards growing up?

German Flea Market Finds #3: Card Goodness

Flea market season is in full swing over here in Germany.  Dozens are happening every weekend so picking and choosing the right ones isn't as hard....if you hit a dud, just move onto the next one.  I try to look around to see what people are buying, but it truly is a random assortment of stuff.  Fortunately, it seems I am the only one in Southern Germany that is collecting cards so that is a positive thing that keeps me going out as often as possible.  Here are some of the highlights of one of the local markets:

I picked up this full album of 1937 Cigaretten-Bilderdenst-Hamburg cards of trees and flowers called "Aus Wald und Flur" (Trees and Flowers) for 8 Euro.  Its catalog number is 21806-17.  As is German tradition, the cards are pasted in the album.   This tobacco card series seemed really popular back in the day due to the amount of them I see these days for sale.  They are also all over German eBay so I feel like I got a pretty good deal.

World Cup fever was in full swing here until Germany lost last week.  Boo, but at least the biergartens are now a lot less crowded.  A local store, Rewe, hands out these cards for every 10-Euro purchase.  They have done this now for at least 3 World Cups.  The cashier took pity on me when I asked if I could have one and he gave me a whole stack of unopened packs.  The cards above, however, came from a seller at the flea market.  He had hundreds of them and I was able to complete an entire 36-card set for 10 Euro and keep my unopened packs sealed.

The WWF (no, not the wrestling brand), World Wildlife Fund, teamed up with the local grocery store, Edeka, to issue these 4-sticker packs with a purchase of groceries.  As you can imagine, each of the stickers contains an image of an animal, or part of an animal for larger, multi-sticker images.  There are 180-stickers in the set and once you tear off the borders of the pack, it reveals 4 stickers that are perforated.  A seller at the flea-market had a whole stack of them and was happy to unload them all for 2 Euro.


More to follow next week.

German Flea Market Finds #2: Some Non-Sport Goodness

It has taken a little while to adjust German life, but it has been the most difficult having my new sumo card supply dwindle while we make the transition.  I have been filling some of my time, though, browsing German Flea Markets.  I hit up another one this morning and came away with a nice haul of some non-sport cards. The language barrier doesn't seem to be a problem as long as you bring money.  That is almost the universal language, but I am sure I could have snagged these for a few less Euro than what I paid.  All in all, I walked away with these 24 cards for about $11 or 10E.

Some German Beauties!
*Sets:
-Koberich 21146-16, Frauen-Schonheit und Anmut (Set of 20)
-Koberich 21146-17, Frauen-Schonheit und Anmut (Set of 20)
*Size :6.5" x 8.5"

--Schonheit in Film (Gruppe/Group 1, Bild/Card 13) - Carola Hohn
--Schonheit in Film (Gruppe/Group 1, Bild/Card 16) - Hansi Knoteck
--Anmut im Tanz (Gruppe/Group 2, Bild/Card 12) - Ursula Deinert
--Anmut im Tanz (Gruppe/Group 2, Bild/Card 13) - Friedl Romanowsky
--Anmut im Tanz (Gruppe/Group 2, Bild/Card 17) -Annemarie Herrmann


A walk back in time with the Egyptians (Aus der Pharaonenzeit)

*Set: Uncatalogued Aecht Franck Coffee (Set of 6?)
*Size: 2.75" x 4.25"

--1. Am Hofe eines altagyptischen Herrschers
--2. Jagd auf Wasservogel am Ufer des Nils
--3. Aegypterinnen beim Ballspiel auf einem Dachgarten im alten Theben
--4. Vornehmer Aegypter beim Sklavenhandler
--5. Pharao verfolg den Bau einer Pyramide
--6. Transport des Materials zum Pyramidenbau durch die Wuste


Famous armies of the world set (Beruhente Regimenter)

*Set: Uncatalogued (Set of 6?)
*Size: 4.5" x 2.75"

--1. Preussen (Prussia)
--2. Frankreich (France)
--3. Osterreich (Austria)
--4. England
--5. Russland (Russia)
--6. Ilalien


Some Pearls of the German Landscape (Perlen deutscher Landschaft)
*Set: Uncatalogued Aecht Franck Coffee (Set of 6?)
*Size: 4.25" x 2.75"

--Bild 7. Auf Rugen
--Bild 8. Die Sachsische Schweiz


I love me some lithographic moth cards!

*Set: Uncatalogued Kornfranck Moth (Set of 8?)
*Size: 4.0" x 2 5/8"

--Bild 2. Die Ronne
--Bild 3. Schwammfpinner
--Bild 5. Ringelfpinner


Animals!
*Set: Uncatalogued Stollwerck Chocolade (Set of hundreds)
*Size: 3 5/8" x 1 7/8"

--Gruppe 270, Bild V - Der Igel (Hedgehog)
--Gruppe 276, Bild IV - Das Opossum

German Flea Market Find #1: Olympic Cards

Welcome from Germany....land of lots of beer, nice cars, and a great culture!  I managed to make it out and about this past weekend to one of the local German flea markets and found these German Olympic cards....I have no idea what sets they are from, but thought they were cool for 2€.  I imagine I overpaid a bit, but since they were my first cards, I was pretty excited to get them.  The color ones appear to be all German athletes, while the black and white set has a mix of different countries and sports.  They are standard trading card size and all show a decent amount of wear.  Hopefully I will find more of them and can update everyone on what they actually are.  More to follow....