The Allen Ginter Project : Card #23 N29 World's Champions Series Two

Ok, I'm so far behind on these cards it's pathetic. Of course I'm also behind on The 792, and I have two box breaks not posted so I guess I'm consistently slack at least. I teased this card almost a month ago so it's time to quit stalling and show it off. Behold, the other Allen and Ginter World's Champions set:

A little beat up, but Eddie's a wrestler so he can take it. Edwin Bibby was a top English wrestler in the 1880's, and while I can find a lot of references to his famous matches online, I can't seem to track down a proper bio. Here is a great picture of him that was obviously the model for this card. One thing I like about this card is that Edwin had the decency to wear a shirt and there are no nipples. Don't laugh, a lot of these Allen & Ginter cards have nipples on them and it bugs me. I just don't like cards with nipples and it doesn't matter whose nipples they are either. There are actually card sets out there that specialize in nipples, if you catch my drift, and I don't like them either. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I don't mind nipples on photos, paintings, film, murals, statues, television, drawings, pottery or even in real life, just keep them the hell off my cards. To find a wrestling card sans nipples is pretty rare due to the high nipplage quotient usually found in those sets. Edwin is a "Catch As Catch Can" wrestler and I have no earthly idea what that means. The only place I've ever even heard of it before is in the episode of Are You Being Served where Wilberforce Claiborne Humphries fights Jackie "Mr. TV" Pallo.

Here's the back. Not terrible considering, although the extra paper stuck to the corners obscuring the title is a shame. This second series of cards is far more diverse than the first and has new sports not seen in the original series such as tennis, skating and track and field events. There are only six baseball players in this series though, and none are as well known as Anson, Ward, Comiskey and Kelly from the first set. These cards can also be found in an album that was sold as a premium, and the larger size cards in the N43 set. Topps Allen and Ginter used those designs in their N43 and National Pride box topper inserts. They also used the Allen & Ginter design to great effect in conning obsessive A&G collectors like me into buying Topps Heritage Wrestling cards, as you can clearly see below. This set is a wee bit more scarce than the N28s and I got lucky to find this one from cardguru4u for only eight bucks.


No nipples showing on Rik Flair!

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.

The Allen Ginter Project: Card #23 - N29 World's Champions Second Series

More detail here.