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1889 Allen & Ginter: 50 Fish from American Waters

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm trying to collect the entire 1889 Allen & Ginter:  50 Fish from American Waters set.  I've even set up a page on my blog dedicated to the venture.

I bought my first card from the set on a whim, but since then, I've decided it would be a fun set to collect (and surprisingly, not terribly pricey so long as you don't care much about condition).

To date, I have five of the 50 cards (10%).  I can't complain much about that.  I found a (free) scanned copy of the original book that went along with the cards - so that's what the images are from.  Here's the first page - and in a fun bit of coincidence, I happen to have two of the first four fish shown (Sunfish and Salmon)!

The second page of the book features five fish - two of which I already own (seabass and toadfish).

I really like the different images for each page of the book.  The third page is also awesome - but unfortunately, I don't yet own any of the fish from the page!

Moving along, the next page features a few creatures that I wouldn't consider fish (crab, eel, skate)...I also never heard of a mullet fish before, sounds very 80s*!

*1880s that is.  Rimshot!

The fifth page of the book features a change of pace in that the entire page is covered with an image of a fishing net.  I can't help but wonder how many people took a book like this and glued all the cards in their appropriate places?

Apparently the book maker got a bit tired because page 6 is the first page to feature six different fish!  Once again though, I'm shutout in terms of having the corresponding cards (at least for now).

Page 7 features a lobster...and an arcade game?  I have no idea what the reddish thing is supposed to be near the bottom right corner, do you?

After a long dry spell, we finally get to another page with a card that I already own!  As you can see, the Tarpon is featured (along with four other fish - or is it fishes)!

I wonder if you can still find the actual book for sale somewhere?  It'd be a fun addition to my collection, particularly if I am ever able to actually complete the set of American fish!

I like how the various images in the book sort of overlap the cards on each page.  It makes the cards feel like they "belong" within the image rather than simply "on top of" like most modern sticker books (Topps, I'm looking at you)!

The final page in the book features the (now famous) Ginter mascot.

I have to give special thanks to the Internet Archive (funding from Microsoft) and this link in particular which is a digital version of the entire book (and where I took the above pages from).

Comments

  1. Those are great. As a fisheries biologist I cringe at the broad generalization of some of the fish, but they are absolutely beautiful. I think that red thing on page 7 is part of a rudder from a boat. The background looks like of like a castaway shipwreck scene.

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  2. Baseball-cards.com have those in their auctions sometimes. at least they used to and they were reliavly cheap.

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  3. without question one of my favorite series. I have the eel, and have been chasing cheap singles since.

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