German Advertising and Collectible Cards - Koberich's Catalogs

Since moving to Germany, I've had a lull in importing Japanese sumo cards so I have been keeping myself occupied with German cards.  Hopefully, everyone will find some interest in these as they are quite a fascinating piece of collecting.  Doing research, I quickly found that Angelika Koberich is the king cataloging German cards.  He also runs an antique book shop up in Rabenau Germany and has an online presence here.  I reached out to Mr. Koberich directly about ordering two of his books and he responded very quickly.  He even sent them to me with a bill enclosed so wasn't expecting payment up front.  I think that is common here in German and a nice bit of customer service.  The two books I ordered were his German Advertising and Collectable Cards from 1872-1945 (Volume 1) and 1946-2001 (Volume 2).  Having just published my Sumo Menko and Card Checklist, I am always fond of other card catalogers.  These books are simply amazing.  Each is hardcover and about 275 pages each.  Even with extremely basic German-language skills I was able to decipher on how to use them.  Although there are no pictures of cards in the sets, the catalog in both books is presented nicely (see picture) to find what set the cards belong to.  Each set has 1) Year produced, 2) Catalog Number and Sequence Number, 3) Title, 4) Number of Cards in Set, and 5) Price. There is a nice index in the back that you can find your set and then go search it in the actual catalog to find all the details.

My real interest in these is that they catalog the German tobacco cards quite nicely.  These cards were originally issued with packs of cigarettes.  Eventually, coupons were added to the packs instead of the actual cards and they the buyer could then redeem so many coupons for packets of cards (issued in groups called Gruppe to stick in albums.  It seems about 5-10 packets of cards would complete 200-300 card sets so each Gruppe packet held about 20-30 cards.  It is more common than not to find albums with all the cards glued into the albums.  Here is an example I pulled from the internet:

This particular set is the Deutsche Volkstrachten which appears to be cards of people from all over Germany.  According to Koberich, this set was made in 1933 by Eckstein, a cigarette manufacturer out of Dresden.  The catalog number is #20502-12...this was the 12th set they produced and it has 198 cards.  Pretty cool.

Once I hit up some more flea markets, I'll post my finds.  Cheers and I hope everyone enjoys there weekend!

Former Maegashira Yamamotoyama makes a slight comeback.....in a music video.

About 8 years ago there was a young Japanese sumo wrestling sensation named Yamamotoyama (YMY for short).  YMY was the heaviest Japanese-born wrestler in sumo history so he caused somewhat of a stir during his quick rise to the top division.  His 215 kilogram/475 pound pimply-chested frame was something to behold, but it was evident that he was likely too heavy to achieve any long-term success. Fate/karma intervened and in 2011 he was kicked out of sumo for accusations of bout fixing.  He and a handful of other wrestlers were suspected to arranging the outcomes of matches which is something the Sumo Association has been actively fighting in the recent past.  After YMY was kicked out, he bounced around various odd jobs, but a few days ago I saw him pop up in an Ed Sheeran music video.  Being in Germany, our English-language TV channel selection is limited so I tend to hover over the music video channels (music traverses many cultures for sure) and Ed's video popped up with YMY debuting at the end.  With over a billion views...here is the video:

Yamamotoyama has two BBM sumo cards (#48 in 2009 BBM, and #40 in 2010 BBM) that capture his brief tenure in the Sumo Association.  I don't have my cards with me yet, so here is a screen capture of his 2010 BBM card from Jambalaya.

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....