1973 Calbee Flag-Back Primer
1973 Calbee #6 Shigeo Nagashima Bat-Back (left) and Flag-Back (right) The 1973 Calbee bat-back set was probably a test issue that saw enough immediate success for Calbee to continue on with production . Whatever the case, th is expanded 1973 set reprints the 91 bat-back cards with the redesigned flag-back and adds 277 more, for a grand total of 368 cards. The flag-back set was released in 10 series or “blocks” starting only about a month after the first bat-backs dropped . There are basically three kinds of flag-back cards: standard cards (released nationwide) , photo variants (released only in western Japan) , and regional issues (released around a certain city and environs) . 1973 Calbee #59 Yoshiro Sotokoba base (left) and B Type Photo Variant (right). The base comes in both bat-back and flag-back while photo variants come in flag-back only Blocks 1 and 2 are simply reprints of the bat-back cards...
