Note: These cards are NOT AVAILABLE FOR TRADE. Please don't email asking me about trading.
As I've mentioned about a billion times around the website, I spent '90-'92 as a Mormon missionary in Japan. Among many other more worthwhile pursuits, I picked up a common missionary hobby, and pursued it with vigor: Collecting phonecards.
Phonecards as they're used in Japan and several other countries are unlike anything in the states. Every pay phone has a slot in the front about the size of a credit card; you bought phonecards of varying denominations at any corner store, and as the value of the card is used up, the phone helpfully punches a little dot through it to show how much credit you have left. Once it's used up, it can't be recharged or anything, and many people just left them behind in the phone booths as garbage.
Naturally, as with any disposable item, somebody figured out a way to make them collectible, by emblazoning them with every image under the sun. Not unlike postage stamps, there is a wide variety of cultural and artistic designs; but since private companies can also design and sell phonecards, there are also product advertisements and other trendy images. The point of much of the diversity, as with postage stamps, is to attract a collector base who will buy the cards and never use them. And since they don't all have to pass through the sanitizing hands of a government agency, they can portray any theme under the sun. (In other words, yes, pornographic phonecards are big business. No, I don't have any.)
Of course we missionaries, being poor, did it the cheap way; we collected the used ones. Official collectible value was the least of our concerns; we saw them as cool mementos and keepsakes, and they were fun to compare and trade with other missionaries. And every trip into a phone booth could turn up something interesting.
Now, ten years later, I've finally gotten around to scanning in my old collection for the edification of the world at large. Here, at least, is something I know James Lileks doesn't have.
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