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Friday, January 11, 2008

Oldy Moldy Mail Day

A couple of neat things arrived in the mail today, this seems like as good a time as any to show them off.

I picked up a couple of ninteenth century cards for less than the price of a pack of Turkey Red. First up is an upgrade on my N4 Birds of America card. It's a pretty nice example, no creases, no paper loss, full back, and someone marked the checklist which is what it was designed for, right? It looks like the guy only needed about ten more for his set, although it's hard to tell because some of the marks have faded. This card is of the Loon, which is appropriate for my collection since I'm kind of loony anyway.


Next up is a card that falls outside the collecting parameters I set for myself, but what the hell, ya only live once. This isn't an Allen & Ginter's card at all, this is from Duke's Cigarettes a competitor of A&G. Duke was as prolific in their trading card sets as Allen & Ginter and they have some fantastic looking sets. Once I finish up with my A&G type set, I fear I'll end up going after Duke next. Well at least this one is out of the way, this is from N71 Actors and Actresses, second series. There are tons of actress cards from the 19th century, although a lot of them are thinly disguised cheesecake pics. This set has portraits of the best known actors and actresses of the time dressed up in historical costumes. My actress is Ada Rehan, an Irish actress known for her Shakespearian roles. I need to do some more research on this set because I appear to have gotten an oddball card - Ada is from series two but this card has a series one back. Unfortunately there is some paper loss on the back so that might make things a little more difficult.


Finally, here's the biggie. The one thing that concerned me more than anything when starting my A&G set was finding cards from the World's Champions N28 and N29 series. Those are the ones with the baseball players and I was worried they would be a lot more expensive than the rest since the baseball subjects cost hundreds of dollars. Well, I was right, but thankfully my love of Tiptons has led me to the promised land. Feast your eyes on this:

That's right, a wrestling card! WWE eat your heart out. It doesn't look that bad, some round corners, a few wrinkles, a little paper loss here, a little extra paper there... The point is, I got my N29! I'll give it the full write up in time, but it's looking more and more like this idea of mine is just crazy enough to work.

2 comments:

AlbuqwirkE said...

You know what? I like the rounded corners on some of these old cards.

I've been wondering if you ever get any interesting stories when you buy these cards. For instance, have any come from descendants of the original owners?

Again... GREAT project! Very fun to read of your progress.

dayf said...

Actually yes, a couple I got from someone who found their grandfather's collection in a trunk. Whether that's true or eBay seller hype, who knows? I plan to do a full steam ahead to catch up on these cards in the next couple of weeks, and you'll find out about them then.