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My Old Cards

Guide

What is Bandai Carddass?

Bandai Carddass (カードダス) is a line of collectible anime trading cards that Bandai has sold from coin-operated vending machines in Japan since 1988. For ¥20 or ¥100 a turn, the machines dispensed glossy cards of the era’s biggest series (Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, Gundam, Ultraman), and they became a defining childhood collectible of 1990s Japan.

How the vending machines worked

A Carddass machine was a free-standing coin box. You fed in your coins (¥20 was two ¥10 coins, since Japan has no ¥20 coin), turned the lever, and the card dropped into the tray. Two formats gave collectors the vocabulary you still see today:

So “Carddass 20” and “Carddass 100” describe the machine and its price, not a type of card. Mounted on the front of each machine was a printed cardboard display header advertising the loaded series and “Part” number. As point-of-sale display material rather than something sold to customers, surviving headers are uncommon and sought-after by collectors.

Where the name comes from

“Carddass” originally named the vending machines; the name later transferred to the cards themselves. According to Bandai, it was inspired by AMeDAS (Japan’s Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System, the national network of automated weather stations, which was topical in 1988), with the idea that Carddass would be an everyday “information source for kids,” the way AMeDAS is a source of weather data.

Although “Carddass” also sounds like kādo (card) + dasu (出す, “to put out / dispense”), The stated inspiration was AMeDAS, not that pun. (One thing not to confuse: AMeDAS, the weather system behind the name, is unrelated to Amada, a different 1990s company whose paper “PP” packs competed with Carddass.)

The 1990s Carddass boom

Cheap, ubiquitous, and tied to the most popular anime of the day, Carddass was a mass phenomenon. The first series, in 1988, was Saint Seiya (part of a launch lineup that also included SD Gundam and Ultraman monsters). Dragon Ball became the runaway best-seller. By the maker’s own account, roughly 2 billion Dragon Ball Carddass cards sold in its first decade or so (by about 1998), and the brand spanned dozens of franchises, from Gundam and Ultraman to Sailor Moon and even pre-TCG Pokémon. In all, Bandai Namco reports having sold over 17.7 billion Carddass cards (17.767 billion as of March 2021, per its own Fact Book).

Sailor Moon Carddass

Sailor Moon cards tracked the TV anime across its five seasons, Sailor Moon (from March 1992), R, S, SuperS and Sailor Stars (through February 1997), produced by Toei Animation from Naoko Takeuchi’s manga. Rather than one numbered series, several parallel lines were released: the main numbered Carddass sets, Carddass Graffiti, and Jumbo Carddass in the 1990s, plus later “Sailor Moon World EX” Carddass sets in 2001 and 2002. Within a set, common regular cards were mixed with rarer chase cards:

The artwork comes from the anime: both screen imagery and posed key-art illustrations. You can browse the scans in the Sailor Moon collection.

Prism, foil, and how they’re printed

Like most 1990s mass-market cards, these were printed by offset lithography in CMYK halftone: millions of tiny cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots your eye blends into smooth colour. Under magnification the dots form a regular “rosette” pattern, and slight misalignment between the four ink plates shows as faint coloured fringing, the signature of a period print run. Prism cards add a foil layer carrying a microscopic diffraction grating; light hitting the grating splits into the rainbow shimmer. These are sub-millimetre features, invisible at arm’s length.

Why collectors care today

The kids who fed ¥20 into these machines are now adult collectors, and Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball have enormous followings worldwide. Prism chase cards command large premiums over commons, and the vending-machine display headers, large, graphic, and uncommon, are among the most sought-after pieces of all.

Key terms

Carddass
Japanese vending-machine trading cards, sold since 1988.
Carddass 20 / 100
The ¥20 (one card) and ¥100 (five cards) machine formats.
Prism / kira
A shiny holographic chase card (“prism” is the official term; “kira” is collector slang).
Display header / insert
The cardboard sign on the machine front (point-of-sale material).
Part
A numbered release within a card series.
Regular
A standard card (the commons).

Frequently asked questions

What is Bandai Carddass?

Carddass (カードダス) is Bandai’s brand of trading-card vending machines, and the cards those machines dispense. Launched in 1988, the machines sold glossy anime and manga cards for a few yen a turn at shops across Japan.

What do “Carddass 20” and “Carddass 100” mean?

They refer to the price and format of the vending machine, not a type of card. A ¥20 turn dispensed one card; a ¥100 turn dispensed five. The ¥20 single-card format was the original, in 1988; the ¥100 five-card format arrived in the early 1990s.

When were the Sailor Moon Carddass cards made?

The Sailor Moon TV anime ran from 1992 to 1997 across five seasons (Sailor Moon, R, S, SuperS and Sailor Stars), and the Carddass sets ran alongside it.

What is a “prism” card?

The shiny holographic/foil chase card, rarer than the matte “regular” cards. The shimmer comes from a foil layer with a microscopic diffraction grating. Collectors call these “kira” (キラ, “sparkle”); the official term was “prism.”

What are the vending-machine display inserts?

The large printed cardboard headers mounted on the front of the machine, advertising the loaded series. As point-of-sale display material rather than something sold to customers, surviving examples are uncommon and prized by collectors.

Why scan and archive these cards?

To document and preserve them. Vintage cards fade, get damaged, and scatter across collections. Keeping an organised scan of each set means there’s a lasting record of what every Carddass release contained.

Sources

Sales figures are the maker’s own reported numbers. All card artwork is © its respective rights holders. This is a non-commercial fan archive.