1979 Calbee Japanese Baseball #5, Kyosuke Sasaki

This close-up batting portrait shows Japanese veteran Kyosuke Sasaki in the colorful, Expos-like uniform for one of Osaka's two teams of that era, the Kintetsu Buffaloes. That star-crossed franchise later merged with Orix BlueWave, starting play as Orix Buffaloes in 2005. (If the BlueWave name sounds familiar, it's best known in America as Ichiro's pre-MLB team.)

Such a serious face, grrrr! A better look at Kintetsu's full uniform appears on this Calbee card from a 1975-76 set. 

1975-76 Calbee (JC4) #558

Sasaki logged a decade with these Buffaloes and wore #5, hence its card number. The card back talks about his team's opportunities and personal record, including what might be a jab at year-to-year batting inconsistency. He straightened things out with three straight .300+ campaigns (1978-80) and retired after 1981, moving into new roles as coach and manager. The rest of his card's a general invitation for collectors to mail in names of their favorite players, with a promise Calbee would publish popular choices later that year.

The company produced a modest 48 cards for this set and four different players share #5, all guys who wore that uniform number for their squads. Give the TCDB checklist's paucity of gallery images, I assume 1979's somewhat harder to find than other 1970s Calbee sets.

• Adrian Garrett (Hiroshima Toyo Carp)
• Yasunori Ishima (Chunichi Dragons)
• Kyosuke Sasaki (Kintetsu Buffaloes)
• Fujio Sumi (Yakult Swallows)

Cards for Kyosuke Sasaki include the 1979 TCMA Japanese Pro Baseball set (set profile) and what looks like an early 1970s Buffaloes team issue.

Value: This Calbee card cost $3.65 on eBay, about what I expect for overseas singles of lesser-known guys. The priciest Buffaloes player from any year might be Hideo Nomo, ace of their staff prior to his move to LA in 1995, and 1979's top Calbee card is likely slugger Sadaharu Oh.

Fakes/reprints: Sadaharu Oh might be 1979's one player with counterfeit risk. Type collectors should stick to someone lower-profile or work with a dealer who knows Japanese issues well.

Bucket Cards: Five Lesser-Known Babe Ruths

I post #BucketCards from time-to-time on my @number5typecard Bluesky account as distinctive or meaningful poses from a wide range of sets. This article gathers five cards of Babe Ruth along similar lines, reflecting his unparalleled career as hurler and slugger from 1914-35. The Bambino first appeared on tobacco-esque sets as a svelte International League pitcher and hung around long enough to still appear on cards for Boston's 1935 Braves, a legendarily terrible club.

Let's start at the beginning!

1914 Baltimore News (as Orioles pitcher)

Baltimore's International League team found an unpolished jewel in Ruth, not far removed from a rough younger life. First scouted for his pitching arm, this sweater-clad card appears in red or blue. Its value is sky high, given how hard it proves to find anything from this set, let alone the Bambino.

Baltimore hosted its own Federal League team, the Terrapins, in 1914, and competed for fans with the existing International League team, an earlier iteration of the "Orioles." Ruth spent just two months there before the Boston Red Sox acquired him in July.

1920-21 Universal Toy & Novelty Company strip cards

These two cards reflect the Babe's transformation from ace pitcher to slugging outfielder, as Universal's card artist adapted a Boston warmup photo into two cards (1920 left, 1921 right). Artistic work on that pastel card turned his normal lefty follow-through into a righty hitting pose, saving the cost of licensing a new photo.

The second card added soft pinstripes to reflect his Yankees affiliation, closer to what fans expected of Ruth by 1921, even when hitting from the "wrong side."

1925-31 W590 "King of the Bat" strip card

Surely this is how we'd all want to be known! "I am royalty and my lineage has mastered...The Bat."

These W590 cards date to the 1925-31 window, based on players and teams shown. It was common for strip card printers of that era to reprint the same images, year after year, only updating spots on each strip when players changed teams or retired. Note how this strip proves current for a single season, 1925, thanks to its bolded players.

• Ike Caveney, SS Cincinnati: 1925 was Ike's last in the majors.
• George Burns, OF Philadelphia: 1925 was as George's only year in Philly and last year in the majors.

While they could print the same photos again and again, W590 contains enough team variations to show someone paid attention to those (literal) lineups, even if to add "former" for existing cards.

Like many strip card collectors, I look forward to future research working out which company made W590 cards and how often they changed layouts. Now, back to the Babe!

1931 W626 Sun Pictures Photo Kits

If Ruth looked like this in real life, I'd call him "The Jaundiced Jolter."

These "sun pictures" tell their own creation story, as simple light exposure brought out (muted yellow) images on the self-developing panels, complete with block letter player name. 12 baseball players appear in this multi-subject set, all stars at their time. This Ruth's a superior batting pose to many others printed under his name.

1935 Schutter-Johnson "Babe Ruth's Grip"

This hand-drawn Ruth card features the art of former MLB pitcher Al Demaree, drawing hands.

Playing advice for enthustiastic kids are a recurring theme on cards and this entire set mixes cartoons with tips, all sketched by Demaree and penned by uncredited ghostwriters.

I love how Babe's quoted as saying, "you will have command of the bat instead of the bat having command of you." Sage words indeed from King of the Bat.

Those five Babe Ruth #BucketCards make for an interesting counterpoint to his far more familiar poses and creations. Let me know what cards would be on your own list!

1900s Stereoview sports scenes: #5 "Resting" - #61 "A Sacrifice Hit" (Yale?) - #73 "The Embryo Golfer"

Stereoviews, explained well here, drove most of the card market for 50+ years (1860s-1920s), pushing the bounds for what viewers expected from photography and paper collectibles. They proved so popular, many modern antique stores contain stacks of surviving images, with singles running a few dollars. Three of them caught my eye during this month's trip to Maine, starting with this new-to-me #5 of a bicyclist pausing for a smoke break.

Bicycles and cigarettes each challenged gender expectations, as a set of wheels offered women more independence to travel and tobacco let them indulge in vices while doing so. This rider's flash of black stocking also showed off the strong calves she developed getting around town, which you can imagine stopping traffic of that era!

The other two show baseball and golfing shots from the 150-card 1925 A.C. Co. set (Prewarcards set profile), where "A.C." stands for "American Colortype," a mass-market printer of many paper products. Its #61 "sacrifice" pose seems staged to enhance the 3D impact of bat and ball pointing out toward the viewer and his "Yale" jersey looks like a stage or movie costume.

This multiracial golf scene exaggerates its ball size so much, could that be the same "baseball" sphere from #61? American Colortype operated out of Chicago and I bet its photographer took this outdoor shot at a nearby park.

While I couldn't find it in person, "Modern Mermaid" offers another sports subject from this series, also studio-shot like the baseball pose to make it appear she's reaching out toward you.

American Colortype printed at least one postcard series for Chicago's 1933 "A Century of Progress" expo and put themselves front and center under the title of "Color Progress."

Baseball fans should remember Chicago's 1933 expo as the debut of our modern All-Star Game and breakout year for bubblegum cards. See my profile of Goudey's All-Star premiums for a deeper dive!

Any stereoviews in your own collection? While surviving baseball examples seem few and far between, they cover almost every topic of interest in those days.

April 2025 progress update: #5 type collection now at 90%+

This blog's type collection targets sets with at least one card numbered five from baseball's majors, minors, and foreign issues of the pre-1981 vintage era. Over 600 different sets fall into that camp! While Topps printed more than any other single company, many smaller makers also stand out. Johnston's Cookies printed one of the biggest in my collection, Hank Aaron's 1954 card from the season he wore uniform #5.

UER: 9 HRs & 61 RBIs for Eau Claire in 1952

It proved easiest to track overall type collection progress by decade, which also shows how total sets remained modest though the 1940s and then rose fast after WWII, echoing the growing buying power of children and baseball's own league expansion. Thanks to my 20+ year search, I own 90% of all qualifying vintage #5s.

Decade: # owned of # possible

• Pre-1920: 19 of 31
• 1920s: 28 of 39
• 1930s: 32 of 36
• 1940s: 28 of 32
• 1950s: 53 of 59
• 1960s: 105 of 118
• 1970s: 198 of 213
• Minor league: 148 of 152
• Total: 611 of 680 (90%)

This blog profiled hundreds of different sets so far, as linked from the type wantlist. It goes well over a book in total length and my work since 2019 includes more in-depth research into notable players, card businesses, and other holes in our hobby that I wanted to fill in. Find more of my card stuff on Bluesky @number5typecard and thanks for reading along, however long you've been doing so!

1949-50 World Wide Gum NHL Ice Stars Wrappers #5, Milton "Milt" Schmidt

My main goal remains to finish a collection of baseball #5s, but Oh Boy, some other sports prove too interesting to ignore!

Many prewar collectors consider Canadian card company World Wide Gum (WWG) a close sibling of Boston-based Goudey Gum, based on their well-known card sets. WWG licensed multiple years of Big League Gum cards from Goudey, as well as popular products like the one-cent standby Oh Boy Gum. That particular penny gum sold well for decades, long enough that WWG innovated in their own way by printing hockey profiles inside wrappers in English and French. Their set of 48 includes many stars from that 1949-50 season (TCDB set gallery).

Bruins center/centre Milton Schmidt, whose #15 they since retired, sandwiched 17 NHL seasons around three years of Canadian military service for WWII. He won the Hart Memorial Trophy as NHL MVP a season after this particular wrapper came out and remained connected to the Boston organization for over 70 years, passing at age 98 in 2017.

While I'm sure many Schmidt autographs exist, signed Ice Stars wrappers must be few and far between.  I spotted this scan on an auction site some years back and PSA's autograph registry shows one certified signed #5, so this appears to be the sole example! It would be amazing indeed to add this type to my collection.

Value: It remains hard to value things seen in such small quantities. As a well-known Hall of Famer, scarce Milt Schmidt cards will command a high price. Lesser-known wrappers from this set could be more reasonable.

Fakes / reprints: I'm not sure if reprinting or faking a set so obscure would be worth the time and effort. Be sure to purchase something this rare from a dealer or collector you trust.

1973 Topps Baseball #273 Chris Speier, Photo Identified from July 15, 1972

Many baseball card blogs from our hobby's history cover the full, eccentric range of 1973 Topps photography. Many card shots originate from spring training, with chain link fences galore. While Topps picked a few bad apples, they also found some great ones. Based on box score research, I think #273 Chris Speier shows baseball's most exciting play, an inside-the-park homer, from July 15, 1972. Catcher #6 John Bateman sprawls in the dust and Phillie relievers look on from their left field bullpen. (Those empty box seats reflect the poor midseason records for both teams.)

I think we can agree Speier's slide is a dozen times better than 1973 cards like "Joe Rudi" showing teammate Gene Tenace.

What's more, Speier faced off against peak Steve Carlton, during the Cy Young winner's mid-season streak of 15 straight wins. The two-run scamper put SF in front 4-0 and would be the most runs Carlton allowed all month. Despite Steve's departure after five innings, Philly found victory by scoring 11 runs in their top of the seventh, creating this 5% to 99% win probability cliff.

11 runs set Philly's high water mark for any 1972 game, let alone for one inning, and Topps benefited from a shot of Speier's standout play. Oh, for another 100 in that set anywhere near as good!