Meet the Collectors - #13 - Elijah Luttmann

Today I am happy to welcome another collector in our intermittent series of Meet the Collectors!

Let's hand over the mic to Elijah!

---

"Hello I’m Elijah Luttmann and I live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania USA. I’m 19 years old and I am currently at college to learn the Chinese language."

"My earliest memories of playing Nintendo are from the early 2010s. I believed it was at my cousins’ house and we played MarioKart Wii. My cousins got me into Nintendo but it wasn’t until around 2017 when I began researching Nintendo’s history and found out how old it was. The first pre-videogame Nintendo item I got was in 2022 and it was the Ultra Machine."

"Pretty much all of my vintage collection comes from eBay but hopefully I can start using Yahoo! Auctions as they have good prices. Sometimes my computer will be full of tabs with item listings that I hope to get."

"Nintendo’s history before games is not well covered and is sometimes overlooked because of how difficult it is to find information on this era. Just hearing the stories of how certain Nintendo toys came to be is fascinating and I love talking about it with those who are interested. As a young child I would actually make my own versions of these products such as the playing cards. I would copy the images by hand."

Elijah's hand-drawn version of a Nintendo promotional item from 1915

"The Paper Model kits are one item I am fond of because I bought them from Nikita Shogov (another collector featured on this site). It's great to see collectors passing off part of  their collection to others." 

"The Color TV Game 6 means a lot to me because it was released around the same time as Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo. Miyamoto is someone I admire a lot for his creativity and passion. When I see these toys I want to be able to tell the stories behind them. For example the Ultra Hand was created by Gunpei Yokoi and it was a toy he made out of scrap parts at Nintendo. Yamauchi saw the potential in Yokoi and it led to him creating some of the most innovative toys and eventually video game innovations."

Nintendo ad in 1960s Playboy magazine

When MB's Twister was first released in the 1960s, Nintendo acquired the rights to localize the game for the Japanese market.

Various box versions of Nintendo Twister

Nintendo targeted the game at families as well as groups of young adults.

As we showed in a previous post on this blog, to connect with the latter group, they sponsored editorial content and placed an ad in Men's Club magazine.

Men's Club magazine November 1967 

I recently discovered another ad that was included in the Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy (週刊プレイボーイ).

As an aside, this Playboy magazine is not affiliated with the internationally renowned publication featuring the rabbit logo (which first appeared in the Japanese market in the mid-1970s), although the content is similar. This publication simply shares the same name—likely not by coincidence.

In the August 8, 1966 edition, we find a full-page ad by Nintendo strategically placed next to that week's centerfold model (referred to, again probably not coincidentally, as a "Playmate").

Kyoto October 2nd 2024, late at night

On October 2nd 2024 the Nintendo Museum opened in Kyoto, Japan.

I was lucky to visit that first day.

Here's what I posted on Twitter that night:

It is after midnight here in Kyoto, and I finally found some time to process the (opening) day at the Nintendo Museum.

It is too early for a full report and review, but I give you 10 things that gave me joy today, and 2 things that can be improved (imo).

Good thing number 1: Nintendo!

This may be a bit obvious, but the Nintendo Museum is a Museum about Nintendo. Only Nintendo. The entire museum!

Good thing number 2: The Nintendo community!

We met so many cool, friendly and positive people today. As a place for this group of like-minded folks to meet each other, it is awesome.

Good thing number 3: the vintage games and toys collection on display!

For me very important, and I must admit I was a bit worried about this after the Nintendo Direct, but the museum did not disappoint at all in this department; it surpassed expectations.

A Treasure in Kyoto: Rediscovering Nintendo’s First Ad from 1894

Discovering a Rare Find—Twice!

A few weeks ago, on October 2nd, I was in Kyoto, Japan, to visit the newly opened Nintendo Museum.

The day before my museum visit, I was lucky to view a historic document recently uncovered by a fellow researcher: Nintendo’s earliest known advertisement, an astonishing 130 years old.

And a day after the museum visit, the discovery of a second copy of that document was truly remarkable.

The earliest known advertisement by Nintendo, 130 years old

I was visiting Japan with fellow Nintendo historians and enthusiasts Florent Gorges and Fabrice Heilig. The night before the museum opening, we stayed at a special location in Kyoto: Hotel Marufukuro.

This was Nintendo's first stone-built headquarters, now renovated and remodeled as a hotel. On the second floor is a room called the "dNa Library," which houses books and artifacts that tell the story of Nintendo’s history. We are honored to have our books—one by Florent and one by me, with contributions from Fabrice—displayed in this library.

Earlier that day, Fabrice had picked an old book from a Kyoto-based antiquarian bookshop.

The shop owner had contacted Fabrice, who lives in France, a year earlier about this book in his collection but, in the end, wasn’t comfortable selling it over such a distance.

Now that Fabrice was in Kyoto for the museum opening, he seized the opportunity to acquire it in person.

As the proud new owner of this historic find, he shared it with us in the library. There could be no better place for this unveiling than Nintendo's former headquarters, located on the very site where the company was founded back in 1889. Florent recorded a video of this moment, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

While visiting the Nintendo Museum the next day, I spoke with Japanese playing card aficionado Marcus Richert, who knew of a Kyoto bookseller offering a second copy of this rare book.

Barely believing our luck, Florent and I set off the following day to investigate. Finding even one copy was a rare stroke of fortune—but discovering two seemed almost unbelievable.