The other day I was going through one of the rec.arts.anime faqs written by Steven Pearl (American Otaking). I've heard of him in passing but was not really aware that he was the moderator of the news group. Anyway, in the faq it mentioned a form of merch I've never heard of before. Japanese telephone cards.

They work similarly to metro cards where instead of carrying cash you can just carry a handy card to use on telephone booths. In modern times they're not used as much due to the invention and widespread use of mobile phones, but back when telephone booths were widely used, telephone cards were popular.

Since of course it's Japan, they have to add some sort of branding to make people want to consoom. So they ended up putting different graphics like celebrities and of course anime characters. I guess the closest modern equivalent we have is those custom credit cards. Japan is a nation of buyfags so certain anime fans started collecting them. Funnily enough, they apparently didn't really use the actual cards since they would deplete in value according to them.

People in general would buy these things because they had certain chips in them or had other specific traits. Entire fanclubs were formed as well. While looking on YahooJapan I found that they're surprisingly still being made and go for a good amount as collectables. I found one even made as late as the release of Frieren. I really figured they would've stopped by the mid 2000s, but I was wrong. It would be a pretty neat thing to own one of these, although I'm a bit afraid to because the buyfag spirit that controls me will compel me to buy more.