Vintage Card Of The Month: 1950s Parkhurst Wrestling Togo Brothers

This month’s VCoM are two cards from the 1954-55 & 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling sets and both cards are two of the three Togo Brothers.

The first card is the 1954-55 Parkie and it shows Ko Togo (L) and Tosh Togo (R) from a promotional shot. This card has a “Lucky Premium” back instead of the regular 1954-55 back. These backs were instant win cards of sorts and offered mail-away offers where you had to send in the card plus the cost (I am guessing for shipping and handling) and you got the item on the card back. My card is for the Cinderella watch but some of the other items were a flash camera with a 50mm lens ($3.75), a high powered giant field glass ($2.00) and a Hopalong Cassidy boy’s wrist watch ($5.95). When the cards were redeemed for the item they were kept by the company so cards with the Lucky Premium back are not as common as the regular cards.

The second card is the 1955-56 Parkie and shows Tosh Togo (L w/ hammer) and Ko Togo (R w/block). This was a time when wrestling was real but the three were more than wrestlers. Previously I had talked about Tosh Togo (The Great Togo, aka Harold Sakata) being a weightlifter but the other two were master martial artists so they often did other events where they showed off their skills, and I am figuring that this cinder block break was at one of those events.

There were three Togo brothers though none of them were actually related. There was Tosh Togo (Toshiyuki/Harold Sakata), Ko Togo (Kokichi Endo) and Mas Togo (Mas Oyama). Ko Togo and Mas Togo do not have their own cards in either set and I haven’t been able to find any cards featuring Mas at all.

I did come across a picture of the three “brothers” together.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1954-55 Parkhurst Wrestling The Great Togo

This month’s VCoM comes from the 1954-55 Parkhurst Wrestling set and is the prequel of the Great Togo card I posted in last December’s VCoM. This set is a little smaller than the follow up 1955-56 Parkhurst Wrestling set, this one is 75 cards.

This card is The Great Togo’s, aka Harold Sakata, aka Tosh Togo, rookie card and as you may have noticed, it is the exact same card as his 1955-56 Parkie card but without the rising sun background. Really the 1954-55 & 1955-56 are nearly identical on the front. The backs were different but the same, if that makes any sense. The 1954-55 backs are vertical with black ink and a small comic while the 1955-56 backs were horizontal, green ink and no comic.