A ton of Airport Trading Cards!

Airport Trading Cards are getting harder and harder to find and eBay has been the only venue I've discovered out there for purchasing.  I suppose I could scour the Twitterverse and Instagram realm, but I don't have accounts and am not interested in getting accounts anytime soon.  But one of my collecting buddies was able to hook me up with 23 cards recently and with another 2 I grabbed off of eBay, I am back down to needing only 20 more for the complete master set which I have pegged at 122 cards.  Billy Kingsley, I might have to ping you to see if you can help me update the checklist on TCDB so I can start adding images.  The even better news is that I can now cross off #12 on my 2019 collecting goals!

Here are the 25 that I was able to pick up in no particular order.  Any of these airports look familiar to anyone?  The YOW airport cards come in both a French and English version!

Japanese カルビー Sumo Wrestling Cards - 3 More Down for 2019

I've written several times before on this beast of a set: the 1973 Calbee Sumo Wrestling Set.  Calbee issued sumo cards only one year in 1973 alongside their baseball sibling.  After that, they disappeared while the baseball sets flourished and are still thriving today.  Why the one year?  No one knows for sure, but an unopened pack on Yahoo Auctions is leading me to believe that these might have been packaged in the same package as baseball cards...meaning that the purchaser wouldn't know if they were getting a baseball or sumo card.  Right on the pack it says 大相撲かーどもあるよ meaning "There also is sumo cards."  The mystery deepens.

 

 

 

And recently an empty box showed up for auction with the same sort of writing 大相撲カード入　meaning "Sumo Cards Inside", but the box is clearly marketed towards baseball.  The mystery deepens further.

 

 

As part of my 2019 Collecting Goals, I planned on picking up 5 more cards from this set this year.  I snagged these two beauties for a great price on 2 January to come barreling out of the gate and they also happened to be under my budget: #1 Ozeki Kotozakura and #3 Ozeki Daikirin.

 

 

Ozeki Kotozakura was promoted to Yokozuna in 1973, shortly after this set was made.  He was arguably a better Ozeki than a Yokozuna as he only won one tournament as a Yokozuna before retiring.  In retirement he trained 4 Ozeki and was highly successful.

 

 

Ozeki Daikirin held the Ozeki rank for 4 years, but was never a formidable opponent and he failed to be much of a contender outside of a few tournaments.

 

 

This one stumbled in my shopping cart on 13 January, but it does have a decent corner ding: #12 Sekiwake Hasegawa.  Hasegawa actually won the championship right before this card was printed, but struggled to go any higher than Sekiwake and ultimately retired a few years later instead of getting demoted back down to Juryo.

 

 

 

Sorry for these poor pictures as they are from the auctions and I won't have them in hand for a few months.  Thanks for stopping by! 





1958 Japanese Star Karuta with Sumo Wrestlers - K581

I've long know about this karuta game set, but only recently managed to pick up the picture cards.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the reader cards to complete the set, but hopefully will find some soon.  This karuta link explains the game a bit more, but in a nutshell this game is played in groups of at least three.  The game begins with all the picture cards face up.  Someone reads the reader card and then the other children try to determine which picture card it corresponds to.  The first person to slap the picture card keeps it and then the next reader card is read.  The person with the most picture cards at the end is the winner.

This K581: 1958 Star Karuta set was first identified by the baseball community and is catalogued by them as JK 25: 1958 Pink Border due to the 15 baseball players found in the set.  There are also 13 sumo wrestlers in the set (hence the sumo catalogue number) as well as famous singers and actors.  The one "oddball" card?  Superman makes an appearance as the letter "Ro".

Issued in an unknown magazine in 1958, these karuta cards measure 2 3/8" x 3 3/8" and came in perforated sheets that had kids separate the cards individually after they purchased the magazine.  They are blank backed, but are printed on fairly thick cardboard stock.

Anyone else ever play karuta?