What are the Nagasakiya Zelda cards?

In late 1998, as Ocarina of Time launched in Japan, a confectionery company called Nagasakiya issued a set of Zelda trading cards. The cards were printed by Amada, an established name in Japanese character cards, and the best supported account of their distribution is as a candy toy: cards sold with sweets, the shokugan tradition, rather than in hobby packs.

That humble origin is why the set is half documented. No full checklist was ever published, and the one collector database that tracks the set lists its total as unknown. Card numbers are attested from No. 1 to No. 49 in surviving listings and photographs, and nothing numbered 50 or higher has been seen. A parallel Nagasakiya sticker product for the same game exists alongside the cards, and how the two lines relate is unresolved.

The cards themselves are richly made for a candy premium: character renders and painted scenes on the front, and a uniform, information dense back with an item guide, a points value and heart icons, documented on its own page in this shelf.

One correction this Library repeats: the story that these cards came from vending machines is a conflation with Bandai's Carddass set of 1999, a different product entirely. Nagasakiya's cards came with candy.