Posted 16 years ago
bayareamus…
(74 items)
This is only serviceable picture I have of this sheet of Japanese baseball cards on display at the Society of California Pioneers, which I visited last week. Nonetheless I thought it was worth posting because it demonstrates the difference in design between these ultra-colorful cards essentially featuring cartoon heads of players, as opposed to most American cards.
From my recent trip to the Society of California Pioneers...
Nice pic. These Bromides are from the 1950s and the sheets are fairly scarce overall. They usually have a lot of Japanese League Hall of Fame players. But in the US the most highly sought after cards are the ones featuring the San Francisco Seals player of the PCL on their PostWar tour of Japan in 1949. Since its hard to read Japanese for most US people, look for the "SF" hats. The SF players sell for $20-$50 ea. in most cases. There are at least 1/2 dozen different kids of bromide sets with these SF players, including some that are real pictures made by Yakyu Shonen Magazine (Youth Sports Magazine).
These particular cards are refered to as "menko" and were produced in 1949. They depict San Franciso Seals and Japanese stars at the time of the Seals historic 1949 tour of Japan (first tour after the war). "Bromides" are photographic cards sometimes refered to as "sashin menko" (photo menko). Seals tour cards are certainly desirable, though perhaps the most highly sought after cards by U.S. collectors are the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf cards.
P.S. I should clarify that "bromides" were popular in the late 1940s and 1950s and were commonly created through a photographic process where the bromide emulsion is visible.