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Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Allen Ginter Project: Card #11 - N5 Birds of the Tropics

One thing about the original Allen & Ginter sets is that there's a whole bunch of sets about birds. Five sets about birds in fact. Two hundred fifty cards all featuring birds. Dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden birds. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Birds!

I don't have anything against birds per se, they just don't excite me all that much. I'm also irritated because the only bird out of the 250 that I'm specifically looking for is in a set where I've only seen a small handful of any of the cards for sale. There's just as many flags as birds and those get tedious too, especially after getting outbid for yet another naval flag and watching all the city flags for places you've actually been to get bids three times the price of the rest of them. Birds were popular back in the 1800's though, and it's understandable A&G put out so many fowl sets. Naturalism was big, Audubon was popular, and hunters could use a handy reference in trading card form to see what they just shot. Birds are colorful and pretty too, a good subject for the lithography of these sets.

I picked up the Great Bird of Paradise from the N5 Birds of the Tropics set. This bushy boid came from qcardsataol for the low, low price of 5 bucks. I almost got an Apterix for the obscure B.C. reference, but I missed out. This card is pretty nice though and if I hadn't got it I would never have seen this hot feathery action from a documentary by Sir David Attenborough. Be careful where you watch this, that bird is a tropical Ron Jeremy. I don't want any of you getting an avian harassment charge.

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