It's hard for many American card collectors to believe that Japanese baseball cards sets that were nationally distributed circa 1930 often featured high school baseball players. That's because the National High School Baseball Championship at Koshien was one of the premier events on each year's athletic calendar. Moreover, Japan Pro Baseball did not begin until 1936. Therefore, top high school players were idolized by many of the country's baseball fans. The JCM 142 set carries a scarcity factor of R5 in the Japanese Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide, Vintage Edition 2.1 by Gary Engel, indicating that five or fewer copies of each card in the set are known to exist. At present, 24 cards are known to be in the set, but there may be additional cards which are as yet undiscovered. All currently known cards feature either high school or university players. The five players in this lot are (left) Kato--Koyo Middle School (top row, left to right) Okano--Aichi Commercial School, Ukai--Aichi Commercial School (bottom row, left to right) Nagatani--Takamatsu Commercial High School, Inada--Wakayama Middle School.

Size: Each card is 1 3/4" x 2 3/4".

Condition: Range--Good to Vg/Ex