I picked up this card on Yahoo Auctions the other day and I'm really pleased with it.
Its from one of the extraordinarily difficult to keep track of sets that Calbee put out in 1978. Its difficult because the cards are not numbered and were issued in ten series that have slightly differing designs. There still does not exist a complete checklist of all of them (Engel's guide explicitly states that all of the cards are not known, and in Japanese Sports Card Magazine never even bothered trying).
This card I picked up is from the "Pennant Race" series and features Dragon's Hall of Famer Morimichi Takagi sliding into home in a game on April 2nd of 1978 (given how early in the season one wonders why they would include it in a series about a supposed pennant race, but I digress).
I love the action photo, with Morimichi's grimaced face captured in perfect detail, and the umpire looking on about to call him safe (presumably).
The back of the card is also quite neat though. Its not the normal back of this card, but rather a Home Run card back:
In the 1970s, like today, Calbee would run contests to give away prizes. Today these come in the form of "Lucky Cards" which you can send in to redeem for a prize. Back then, they would just change the backs of some cards from the regular design to a Home Run card design, which you could send in to redeem for the prize. The prize you could win for this one would be either a mascot bat with a printed signature, a card album, a baseball fan book or, if you collected three of them, a ball with a printed signature on it.
Since only a small number of any given card had a Home Run card back, and most of those were sent in to be redeemed as prizes back in the day, its really rare to find cards with Home Run Card backs today and they are highly sought after by Japanese collectors. I was only able to score this one by chance, the seller wasn't a card dealer and hadn't noted the fact that it was a home run card in the description so it flew under everyone else's radar. Score for me:)
