I'm not an expert on nineteenth century cards and I'm not going to act like I really know a whole lot about these things. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by old tobacco cards and I liked to play with the Dover reprints I had. The numbering system confused the hell out of me though. T206 was the first ACC designation everyone learned, but I wanted to know what a T106 was. I knew what a T3 Turkey Red card was, but why wasn't there a T1 or T2 in the price guides? I thought there was a whole bunch of ultra-rare baseball cards out there that they just didn't bother telling us about since they were so scarce. And who knew what the hell an N-series card was, I just knew the Allen & Ginter cards from the reprint books. This is long before I had ever heard about Jefferson Burdick and his card catalog.
Ol' Jeff was the man responsible for all those weird numbers that got attached to the old tobacco sets. His American Card Catalog attempted to organize the massive number of trade and premium cards that were issued in America. Just about everything issued before his death is referenced in that catalog. Even well known sets have an ACC designation even if it's not commonly used. For example 1933 Goudey is R319, while 1952 Topps is R414-6. While the catalog was a great boon for baseball card collectors looking for information, the fact is baseball cards are just a tiny fraction of of the cards listed in that book. Burdick loved to collect cards, and he collected everything. Baseball players, actresses, automobiles, cowboys, quadrupeds, lighthouses, fish, Indians, G-men, ships... if it was on a trading card Jefferson knew about it and put it in that book.
Nineteenth century cards weren't originally designated with the N prefix, they had no prefix at all. The N stuck to them later on after hobbyists started using it regularly. While a lot of the numbering system is somewhat random, the nineteenth century has some semblance of order to it. The numbers start off with Allen & Ginter and go through their sets alphabetically, then go on to more or less do the same with other manufacturers such as Duke, Goodwin, Kinney and Kimball. Sets N1-N34 consist of Allen & Ginter issues that are traditional tobacco card size, N35 to N40-something are larger size versions of several of these sets, and I don't know what the hell the rest of them are because I don't own the book.
Now, nineteenth century baseball cards are a pipe dream for most collectors. They're insanely scarce and there is a large demand for them due to the fact that they are a piece of baseball history back in the formative years of the league. The Allen & Ginter ones are also sought after for the attractiveness of the lithograph design. Allen & Ginter had 68 sets in total, and of them only three featured baseball players, N28, N29 and N43. Even those sets were not all baseball and featured other sporting champions. While the baseball subjects are extremely costly, it is possible to find decent examples of the non-sport cards from A&G for less than the price of a box blaster. While most collectors would obviously much rather have an original Cap Anson card instead of some fish or a dude smoking a pipe, the non sports cards are just as beautiful and just as old.
The first 34 A&G sets are organized alphabetically from American Editors to World Sovereigns. I'll begin at the beginning and talk about the first set, N1 American Editors. This 50 card set (indeed, most sets of that period were 50 cards) featured the editors of major newspapers around the country. Many of the subjects are fairly obscure nowadays, although most people have certainly heard of Joseph Pulitzer. Henry W. Grady is at least known in Atlanta for the hospital that bears his name, if not the fact that he was once editor of the Constitution. The cards show a lithographed portrait of the editor in front of a mock up of his newspaper. The backs do have a card number, somewhat of a rarity for that time, and the set is numbered alphabetically by the editor's last name. The back states that this is the "First Series" of editor cards although I don't know of a second series unless they are talking about the N35 set, which is a larger size version of this set. A complete checklist of the set can be found here at the PSA registry, and Dave's Vintage Baseball Cards has a small gallery available here.
Now, do you think I would drag you through all this dry boring nonsense about moldy old trading cards and not throw you a bone? Hell no! I have used my 1337 M$P4int skillz to create specially for you, dear reader, one of my dream Allen and Ginter cards, Bert Randolph Sugar.
Bert Sugar is THE boxing historian, period. The former lawyer and advertiser took his love or writing and boxing and became editor of Boxing Illustrated in 1969. He went on to be the editor of The Ring and Fight Game magazines and has written a truckload of books. He can be seen on ESPN Classic Ringside, and in several movies and documentaries. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport in 2005. But we love him for his Dover baseball card reprint books. Those old reprint cards I mentioned about 20 paragraphs ago? Yep, Bert's the one responsible for 'em. The first Allen & Ginter card most people have ever seen (before Topps ripped 'em off at least) was probably a glossy, perforated King Kelly or Charles Comiskey from one of his reprints. Hell, even Ben loves Dover reprints. Certainly the man who first introduced me to A&G cards deserves his own card. I've created card #51 in the Allen & Ginter American Editors series for that man, Bert Randolph Sugar.
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