Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1955-56 Parkhurst The Great Togo


This month’s VCoM is The Great Togo from the 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling release, a 121-card checklist wrestling set that covered the big named wrestles of the time.

The Great Togo, also know Toshiyuki Sakata or Harold Sakata, may be better known to some as Oddjob in the James Bond film Goldfinger but he was a very accomplished weight lifter and wrestler before he became an actor. Following his time in the US Army during WWII he began lifting weights and went to the 1948 London Olympics where he won a Silver medal in the Light-Heavyweight weightlifting category.

In the early 1950s he began his wrestling career, at times teaming up with Masutatsu Oyama and Kokichi Endo as the Togo Brothers/Family winning 12 championships as an individual and tag-team.

This 1955-56 Parkie is his second-year card with his 1954-55 Parkhurst card being his official rookie card. The odd thing is, I guess a cost cutting choice, but the 54-55 card uses the same exact image but is a plain white background.

This card is in horrible shape and I want to eventually replace it, but it has great colors and you gotta love the look on Sakata’s face. I don’t think I have ever seen a wrestler smiling so big on a card before.

4 comments:

  1. Nice well loved vintage. Ah I can almost smell the cardboard... oh wait that's sushi UGH.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I probably should have known that Oddjob was a wrestler. Love this card. I have one or two from this set but had no idea he was part of it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fantastic card! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Never seen this set before... but that card is cool. If I wasn't cutting back on spending... I'd chase down one of these for my collection.

    ReplyDelete