1940s Japanese Menko cards?

[jjbond]

(I'm not sure which forum section this should be posted in. I apologize if there was a better section for this question)

Over the past few weeks I've started getting interested in looking at old Japanese baseball cards. (I've started learning the language, so this seemed like an interesting and related challenge). I even downloaded Engel's Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist.

Does anyone else collect these? I get that it'd be challenging to find a lot of these, but I'm unexpectedly challenged by matching Menko cards to the checklist (do I assume most things I'm looking up are just unlisted?) It sounds like anything before the '40s is impossible to get, but it looks like there's a lot of nice vintage cards to track down. (and I had thought Meknos would be easier to start with than Bromides...)

[nat]

Hi JJ -

Yeah! Old Japanese cards are great!

There are, indeed, a lot of unlisted sets (and some sets are listed in the guide but are incomplete, so you may yet find unlisted cards from otherwise catalogued sets).

Menkos and bromides are both available, albeit not in the quantities or with the selection that American cards from the same era are. I know that there are people who try to complete sets, but that seems to me like it would be extremely challenging (especially if you're not actually in Japan).

Here is a long thread that is mostly about my effort to build a collection of Japanese hall of famers.

I'm happy to talk about Japanese cards, or Japanese baseball, if you're interested or have questions. We have a few members who are more knowledgeable than I am about it, and who can actually read Japanese (to call my own skills with Japanese "rusty" would be to insult rust), and hopefully they'll chime in here.

[Casey2296]

-
Love Japanes baseball cards.
The only Menko set I was able to complete,1949 JCM 111, also completed the 1964 Fujiya Gum set. Working on a JCM 135 Maruten sequential Nagashima set but the odds of completing that one are steep.
_

[Kawika]

Another dabbler in Japanese cards here. Have two or three small stacks of mostly ungraded menkos, bromides and whatevers. Love the funky aesthetics. Wouldn't dream of collecting a set. Too esoteric for me, brah. No can handle.




'30s Menko



Kaoru Betto abides

1950 Bromide



1950 Shonen premium (approx 6x9)



ETA: To the OP - Avail yourself of Robert Klevens' Prestige Auctions. Robert posts here, is a super nice guy, and is walking encyclopedia of Japanese baseball. He conducts small auctions several times a year. Always has interesting stuff. As far as I know he has a table at the Chicago National that is going on at the present time. One of my regrets of missing this year's event is not spending a pleasant half-hour chatting with Robert whilst eyeballing the cardboard.

[jjbond]

Originally Posted by Kawika

Wouldn't dream of collecting a set. Too esoteric for me, brah. No can handle.

Yeah, I'm torn at trying to work on full sets, or trying a one-of-each just to see all the lovely variety.

[seanofjapan]

I love menko. I’ve spent about twenty years living in Japan and have a pretty decent collection of them with a fair number of sets either complete or semi complete. Its a lot easier to put them together if you live here. This is one of my menko binders