How many times can I sing the praises of menko cards? The artwork ranges from crude cartoons to museum-worthy, and the backs have all kinds of interesting things you don't find on regular cards. Like monkeys.
I try to avoid buying cards that don't fit anywhere in my collection. Do I need a card of that player? No? Am I building that set? No? Does it fill a gap in my type collection? No? Then I'll pass. Except menko. They're just so cool! I've assembled a small collection of menko that have no home, and I'm fine with that. So it is with these.
Let's start with a card I can't identify. The Clippers existed only in 1950; they merged with the Pirates to become the Lions in 1951. The player is Shissho Takesue (I hope that link works).
After this card,the remaining cards come from a 1950 set titled "Animal Back" for obvious reasons. Given a rarity of R3, they must be pretty rare, but aside from the first card below these are commons.
And thanks to a wonderful kid's card game, you now know four Japanese animal names.
Until next time..
Beautiful cards... and thank you for the free Japanese lesson. The only one I knew was usagi, because of TMNT.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed the cards! I haven't watched TMNT in ages; I should do that soon.
DeleteFrom my experiences in Lawson's, I though "chicki" meant chicken...
ReplyDeleteFunny coincidence - I just helped identify a completely different uncataloged menko card of Takasue for someone on Twitter.
I don't hear niwatori (鶏) very often for prepared food, but I usually see it used for the animal, or for meat in the supermarket, where they say chicken meat (鶏肉, pronounced toriniku).
DeleteSo bad they are good! Crude or not, those late 1940s/early 1950s baseball menko are awesome! That Takesue one was made by Mitsuwa, but definitely seems uncatalogued. One of the reasons you see romaji during this time is because at the time Japan was still heavily occupied by Western Forces and was a easy way for them to teach the Westerners Japanese. Engel is going to have to get another version of his book out with all the unknown sets you've been uncovering.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'd like to think I've discovered some new cards, I'm guessing that many of my "finds" are simply cards that he doesn't have enough information on to catalogue yet.
DeleteGreat cards, those Animal back ones are hard to find!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, I seem to see them more frequently than I'd like. Perhaps it's because they're easily recognizable, and I already have one for my type collection. I'd much rather come across the hundreds of other vintage sets I still need!
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