Rakkikado. That's "lucky card" in Japanese. I now have two of them. I don't know what prize you would get when redeeming the lucky cards, but the offer must have expired long ago, and the two lucky cards I have were redeemed, anyway.
I found a lot of these stickers packaged together pretty cheap while wandering around Nakano. They seem to feature a selection of retired and possibly active (during their time) stars. I haven't done much research on the player selection to try to figure out an estimated release date.
The stickers feature crude cartoon artwork that I suppose is intended to represent the player. The artwork seems to be reused on different cards by changing the size or orientation. His last name (in romanji) and jersey number is at the top, while the kanji and hiragana for his full name is placed over the artwork.
Strangely, Tadashi Matsumoto's card contains no artwork. He played for the Yomiuri Giants from 1977 to 1987, and later coached for them for several seasons.
Most of the cards use simple color fronts and yellow backs. That includes Sadaharu Oh's card seen above. However, seven of the cards in the lot have white backs and holographic foil fronts
The more I see these cards, the more I like them. I don't really know anything about them though! I've seen cards similar to these before but I don't really remember where.
As for the two lucky cards, they are both on the yellow backs, and don't give any actual details on how to redeem them. I assume you'd return to the store for your prize, or at least for information on how to redeem it. Lucky cards can be found in a bunch of releases prior to BBM entering the market - most notably, old menkos and Calbees had lucky cards inserted. The prize was usually a larger card or other premium.
If you have any more information, let me know!
Interesting. The players seem to be mostly Giants from the mid to late 1980's. I think "Okamoto" is Ko Okamoto who played for them between 1985 and 1988 and everyone on the non-holographic cards was with the Giants during that time period (Oh was managing the team them and still wearing #1). On the holographic cards, Ochiai and Mayumi are throwing me a bit. Ochiai played for the Giants from 1994-96 and wore #6 in 1995-6 but Mayumi (I'm assuming it's Akinobu Mayumi) never played for the Giants. I wonder if the holographic ones don't have to be Giants. (Of course, I'm assuming that since the non-holographic ones you have are all Giants, there aren't any non-holographic ones anywhere that aren't Giants which is probably silly on my part...)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'd guess they were released between 1985 and 1988 but other than that I don't know a thing about them. I don't see anything in the latest edition of Engel that looks like them.
Upon further review, I will revise my estimation of the release year - Kuwata's rookie year was 1986 and (as you point out) Matsumoto's last year was 1987 so I'd say the cards were released in either 1986 or 1987.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the help here. I think I've seen something similar to this at one of the ballparks in the capsule toy machines, so it makes sense that this could be a Giants stadium product from the 1980s. Then again, it's possible that a Giants fan accumulated these from some all-team release by trading them, or that the stickers were split by team, etc.
ReplyDeleteThey're fun enough that if I see more I'll pick them up. Maybe we'll start to see a trend.