The Allen Ginter Project: Card #7 - N4 Birds of America

Here's the seventh card I picked up for my Allen and Ginter Type set, Osprey from the N4 Birds of America set. It's pretty beat up, has a tape or glue stain on the back and a massive crease that broke the paper and caused a large chunk to fall off the wing. I picked it up from eBay seller lakotainc, who has a neat variety of tobacco cards and tags, some knicknacks, gum staler than you could ever imagine, and ancient toiletries including some extremely old condom tins with the original contents. A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.


I wrote in my last post that this card exhibited three desirable qualities.: a) cheap b) cool looking c) available to buy. You can look at it and see it is definitely b. Paper loss aside, it's a really cool painting of a shrieking bird snatching a very surprised fish that's almost as big as itself. It's the very first combo card, featuring a bird of America and a fish of America. There's not really any birds in this set I had to have anyway, an eagle would be nice but expensive, a carrier pigeon would be nifty for the historical value, but there's no falcons or thrashers in there. There is a swallow tailed hawk, but it was kind of goofy looking. Basically any good looking card would work for me as far as this set goes.


When I found the auction no one had bid on it and it was late in the game. This is what I mean by available to buy. It's been my experience that if one of these cards has a bid on it, usually there's going to be more. The people who buy these things are vicious too, I've gone from winning a card with 30 seconds left to watching five bids go through that jacked the price up way out of my range. No bids late or even better - a buy it now card - means this card is there for the pickings and you better get it quick. I left a good looking Charles Vane N19 Pirates card go unsold for 5 bucks because I had just won the one I have. The next go around the bids came pretty quickly and I lost my chance. This card was good looking enough for me to pull the trigger, and I ended up being the lone bidder.

Ok, so I've established b) and c) from my list. What about cheap? How much did I pay for this bee-you-tee-ful boid? See for yourself:


$1.99! That's a pack of retail Topps! For a hundred and twenty year old card! Featuring strength and beauty and mountains and violence! And it's a Tipton too, so I increased my beater card cred! Can you guys see why I'm so nuts over these cards now? Two bucks!