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: 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.