1993 Sumo Wrestling POGs - Konishiki & Musashimaru

A little over a year ago I stumbled upon some POGs from 1993 that depicted the famous Hawaiian sumo wrestlers Musashimaru, Akebono, and Konishiki.  Their popularity coincided with the American POG craze of the mid-1990s and were subsequently captured on several sets.  I was recently able to pick this POG set up from a friend that features then Ozeki Konishiki and then-Sekiwake Musashimaru with the latter going on to attain sumo's highest rank, Yokozuna.  Scans don't do the images justice, but the pictures are a combination of blue and gold foil.  For Musashimaru's POGs they say "Ring Champ" and "Fiamalu Penitani - Waianae's Pride Hawaii, 1993".  For Konishiki's POGs they say "Ambassador of Sumo" and "Salevaa Atisanoe - Nana Kuli's Son Hawaii, 1993".  Both Waianae and NanaKuli are areas in Hawaii.  The backs say these POGs were printed in Hong Kong as well as lists a telephone number "955-7109" although I haven't been able to determine what business/person this phone number is associated with after doing a quick Google search.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Everyone Loves an Underdog - 1996 Sumo Wrestling Playing Cards

Fuji over at The Chronicles of Fuji sent me a short sumo wrestling video of the popular small wrestler, Enho, taking on his stablemate and arguably one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, Hakuho. Enho is one of the smallest, if not the smallest, wrestler in the top divisions and his speed combined with technical savvy is almost unrivaled in sumo at the moment.  But he is small and in sumo sometimes no matter how fast and agile you are, size does matter.  In an era of weaker top division wrestlers, Enho might have been able to make a bigger mark, but sadly he has likely topped out on any future promotions.  However, as Fuji puts it, we all love an underdog from time to time.

The original small guy and underdog that I remember is one-time Sekiwake, now Shikoroyama Stable Master, Terao.  He had a 23-year active career from 1979-2002 and was the popular small guy at the time.  Crowds loved him, he was spry, and he had the right personality and aura about him to make him so fun to watch.  I first saw him at the sunset of his career, but he still had some gas left in the tank and still dominated his peers.  However, his career peaked in the mid 1990s right when sumo was reaching new popularity heights with the dominance of Wakanohana, Takanohana, Akebono, and Konishiki, not to mention Musashimaru and Kaio.  He was never destined to promote to the top ranks, but he sure drew a crowd.

I was recently reminded of Terao when I picked this 1996 Playing Card set up with Terao as the queen of diamonds, a very healthy and respectable position in these sumo card decks. Looking at the wrestlers above him and around him at the King and Jack levels, it is easy to see why sumo loves the underdog, but it surely doesn't offer any respite from taking on the big guys.  

1990 Sumo Wrestling NTT Telephone Cards

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Japan went through an extremely widespread and popular telephone card collecting boom.  Any and every subject was printed on telephone cards.  There were collecting magazines, collecting groups, and even investors who snagged up the plethora of cards that hit the market during this ~10-year timeframe.  The phone function behind these 2 1/8" x 3 3/8" flimsy plastic cards, beyond the collecting aspect, is simple.  Buy a card for a set price and you would be able to carry it around with you and make calls from any NTT telephone across the country.  This precluded you from having to carry any cash.  Once purchased these cards would be inserted into the public phone to activate the phone.  Simply make your call and when you are done, the phone would punch a little hole on the card to let you know how many credits you had left.  Once people started buying them to collect, rather than to be used, the phone companies pumped out the cards by the millions.  It was a almost like free money because a "punched" card was worth a lot less than an unused card.  People would buy them and store them away never intending to ever use them.  During this time, hundreds of different cards with sumo wrestlers were also produced.  Cataloguing them, however, is proving to be a little difficult.  At some point in 1991, NTT switched over from a standard back (shown below) to one with a barcode.  The pre-barcode cards actually had individual card numbers on the back.  Once they switched to the bar code, the barcode number stayed the same no matter what the subject was on the front.

It has taken me sometime to start working on cataloguing telephone cards.  Simply because they usually run around $10US per card...there still is a healthy market for the cards surprisingly.  Now that the number of new sumo wrestling menko and bromide cards being discovered is decreasing, I can focus more of my efforts to these modern collectibles.  I plan on cataloguing these telephone cards with the "CT" (Card, Telephone) prefix in the 5th Edition of my book.  Why the CT, and not just T or C?  Well during this time as well, Japan Railways issued similarly looking cards called Orange Cards, that could be used to pay for train travel.  I plan on cataloguing those as "CR" (Card, Railway).  

This set is from 1990 and is significant since it captures four of the modern day Yokozuna as well as Konishiki, a popular, but controversial wrestler from Hawaii.  This is the first CT set I've catalogued and it will be forever known as the [CT901/1990 NTT Facsimile Signature Set] in my book.

Here is the checklist:

110-47552: Yokozuna Chiyonofuji
110-47553: Yokozuna Onokuni

110-47554: Yokozuna Hokutoumi
110-47555: Ozeki Hokutenyu

110-47556: Ozeki Konishiki

110-47557: Ozeki Asahifuji

 Thanks for stopping by.

1984 - The Year the Hawaiian Sumo Torch was Passed

1984 marked a pivotal year in foreign participation in sumo wrestling....especially for the Hawaiian wrestlers.  Superstar Takamiyama (Jesse Kuhaulua from Hawaii) ended his historic 20-year career in sumo wrestling.  He racked up an impressive career.  Jesse was the first foreigner to win a sumo tournament and at the time of his retirement had the most kinboshi(victories over yokozuna), most career bouts with 1,653, and was the third heaviest wrestler in sumo history.  Jesse was well like and it was a difficult adjustment for those used to seeing him in the ring after 20 years.  In 1984, up-and-coming Hawaiian superstar Konishiki (Saleva'a Atisano'e from Hawaii) had just broken into the top ranks of sumo and would go on to have a storied, although troublesome, career retiring in 1997.  By all standard marks, Konishiki would have been promoted to yokozuna with his impressive succession of tournament records, but his status as a foreigner and the Sumo Association's general dislike of him prevented him from reaching this goal.

The 1980s were dismal in terms of sumo card sets.  The only sets being produced were playing card sets with pictures of the wrestlers on them.  This 1984 set is the only set that captures the handing of the Hawaiian sumo torch from Takamiyama to Konishiki.  Takamiyama was designated the Jack of Spades and Konishiki the 7 of Diamonds.  Face cards were reserved for the top-ranked wrestlers and Takamiyama was well deserving of this honor.