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About Magnetic Phonecards

Magnetic phonecards (manufactured by Anritsu, Tamura and sometimes Hakuto) contain a magnetic strip that records the available units on the card. Holes are punched along the top of the card to indicate the approximate number of units remaining. Before April 1987, cards were printed with a white area in the lower left-hand corner with two, three or more black stripes corresponding to the card's denomination. After this date, the white bar was removed and the stripes printed on the card's reverse. In addition, from May 1985 onwards, notches were placed on the lower right-hand side of each card to make them more difficult to counterfeit. Today, 50 and 105 unit cards (with two and three stripes on the reverse, respectively) are the only denominations produced, although cards with higher denominations were produced in the past.

Phonecard Categories

One of the reasons for the huge number and variety of Japanese phonecards is that, in addition to the public issue phonecards designed by NTT, cards can also be produced privately in the form of advertising ("Free design") cards, "Model design" cards and computer-printed cards. Printing and manufacturing of these "private" cards is the responsibility of Teleca, a subsiduary of NTT. The last category of private cards, "White" cards, are those sold by NTT to outside companies for printing. Phonecard publishers increasingly prefer these to "free design" cards because they are faster and cheaper to have printed; unfortunately for collectors they are all given the same code number, making them difficult to catalogue.

Public issue cards are easily distinguished from private issue cards because the former have the NTT logo on the front of the card, whereas private issue cards have it on the back.

"White" cards are produced by NTT with blank, white fronts, and sold to outside companies for printing. These cards are all given the same generic code, making them difficult to catalogue. This code was originally 110-011, but has since changed to 110-113, 110-114, 110-115, and is now 110-016. To complicate matters further, private printing companies sometimes obtain public issue cards at discount rates and print the customer's design over the original, rather than using "white" cards. These cards retain the code of the original public issue card on the reverse, but can be distinguished from public issue cards by the absence of the NTT logo anywhere on its surface. Commonly overprinted cards are the pastel-coloured definitive cards, which have the code 110-007.

"Model Design" cards are produced with generic background images onto which text can be printed as per the customer's wishes. They are commonly used as novel business cards, or given away as presents with the appropriate felicitatious message for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, promotions or retirements. These cards can be identified by the Japanese word for model (; "moderu") followed by the card's code number (110-XXX, where 110 indicates it is a nationwide card, and XXX is the number of that design) on the reverse of the card.

These are private edition cards whose design is provided by the customer. These are often used by companies as advertising cards, and can be identified by the code numbers on the back, which are prefixed with the Japanese word for "free" (; "furii"), followed by the regional branch number (three digits), a dash and the card number.

Reverse of a typical "model design" card.

Reverse of a typical "free design" card.

At many NTT outlets it is possible to produce a small number of phonecards with your own design or photograph on them via a computer and/or photo booth. These computer-printed cards are prefixed with the letters TCP, followed by the code number 110-XXX, similar to Model Design cards.

These cards are sold directly to the public from NTT outlets and other authorised stores. Apart from the nationwide cards, which are sold throughout the country, most public issue cards are produced and distributed by regional offices, and typically feature famous places, events, or people from that region. In total, there are 11 different NTT regional distributors.

Before being privatised, Den Den Kosha issued 70 public phonecards, which are now referred to as "NTT precursors". These can be identified by the Den Den Kosha logo printed on the front of the card.

Public issue phonecards have a six digit code on the reverse of the form "XXX-XXX", with the first three digits indicating the region, and the last three digits assigned as the design is issued. (Occasionally, however, the first three digits are replaced by the name of the district issuing the cards - in Japanese!)

At first, regional codes all terminated with a zero (apart from Osaka, whose code was 331 - a special case). In April 1991, these were changed from XX0 to XX1, and the issue numbers recommenced from 001.

To date, over 7000 different public issue cards have been produced. Follow the links below for (somewhat incomplete) lists of the cards from each region:

For various reasons, not all code numbers have been used. Cards with the following numbers do not exist:

231-169
231-202
231-267
250-344
250-345
251-045
251-159
251-160
270-223
270-224
270-230 to 270-233
270-237
270-257
270-266
290-142
290-166

290-462 to 290-468
290-471
290-474
291-040
291-142
291-145
291-248
330-137
330-228 to 330-230
331-051
331-353
350-074
350-075
390-084
390-103

390-133
390-146
390-148
390-301
390-302
390-306
390-307
390-310
390-313
390-314
390-364 to 390-368
411-079
430-048
430-049
430-051

In most cases an issue was planned, but then stopped before production, eg, 231-169 was to be a card with a picture of a snowman, but an objection was raised since the snowman had no arms, and a "deformed" snowman was deemed to be unacceptable.

In addition, cases exist where code numbers have been used for more than one design. The following code numbers can be found on two different cards:

Until 1986, Osaka was given a separate code (331-) to the rest of the Kansai (330-) region, and a few cards were issued (including Den Den Kosha cards 331-000 and 331-001). After 1986, Osaka cards were given the Kansai code (330-). After the change from XX0- codes to XX1- codes, cards were issued once again with numbers 331-001 to 006. The original Osaka branch cards can be distinguished by the black stripes and white bar in their lower left-hand corner.

Cards with the following numbers were recalled after issue and are rare:

Here are the top 18 rarest public issue cards (excluding those listed above). All are re-issues of earlier cards (given in brackets)

230-185 (230-004)
250-382 (250-102)
250-385 (250-158)
250-399 (250-091)
270-311 (270-034)
290-415 (290-149)

290-461 (290-133)
290-469 (290-013)
290-470 (290-038)
290-477 (290-074)
290-571 (290-099)
331-037 (330-143)

331-038 (330-148)
390-309 (390-150)
390-318 (390-128)
390-348 (390-157)
410-312 (410-071)
430-235 (430-095)

There are about 300 cards that have been re-issued with different numbers. In principal, until April 1991 a new printing of a card was given a new number, but after this date new issues kept the same number while the design on the reverse was changed. Since then there have been several re-issues with different designs and positioning of the code numbers on the reverse.