Vintage Allen & Ginter Additions (1888 Edition!)

This week marks the final week of regular classes of the semester for me.  That's awesome because this has been a terribly long semester!  My students have actually been quite wonderful (for the most part) but I ended up having to pick up an extra class due to a retirement last year and I've found my overloaded schedule to be exhausting...  However, as a bit of a reward to myself for making it (here's hoping I don't jinx myself in the final week), I bought myself some more vintage Allen & Ginter cards.

I love picking up original Allen & Ginter cards here and there.  For the most part, I don't care much about condition which allows me to sort of "cherry pick" some of the cheaper cards available from time to time.  I also don't know a whole lot about the various original Allen & Ginter sets, but from what I can tell, there were at least 14 different A&G sets released in 1888 alone (and to think, we complain about the plethora of sets released today)!

The various sets include:
1888 Allen & Ginter Birds of America (N4)
1888 Allen & Ginter Celebrated American Indian Chiefs (N2) - Basic
1888 Allen & Ginter Celebrated American Indian Chiefs (N2) - Master
1888 Allen & Ginter City Flags (N6)
1888 Allen & Ginter Flags of States & Territory (N11)
1888 Allen & Ginter Great Generals (N15)
1888 Allen & Ginter Parasol Drill (N18)
1888 Allen & Ginter Pirates of the Spanish Main (N19)
1888 Allen & Ginter The American Indian (N36)
1888 Allen & Ginter Wild Animals of the World (N25)
1888 Allen & Ginter World's Beauties (N26)
1888 Allen & Ginter World's Beauties (N27)
1888 Allen & Ginter World's Dudes (N31)
1888 Allen & Ginter World's Racers (N32)
1888 Allen & Ginter World's Smokers (N33)

Side note:  This must be where Topps' got their idea for World's Dudes set in this year's edition of the relaunched A&G brand!

Out of the 14 (or 15 sets if you include the Master set of the Celebrated American Indian Chiefs as a different set), I had owned representatives from the World's Beauties (N26, first series) set (here) and the Wild Animals of the World (N25) (here).  Now, I can mark off a third set as me having at least one card from it...and in fact, I can report that I own three cards from the City Flags (N6) set.

Like most of the Allen & Ginter sets of the time, the City Flags set is 50 cards deep.  As you can probably guess from the set's name, each card features the flag of a specific city somewhere in the world.  As I mentioned, I was able to land three such cards including Marseilles.

That artwork on the card is gorgeous, I love all the vegetation and the waterfall.

I also purchased the City Flag card of Trieste.

Of the three cards I bought, I think this one is my favorite because of the harbor view in the artwork.

The final City Flag card is for Mecca.

As you could probably guess, the Mecca card commanded the highest premium of the three cards.  However, as it ended up, I landed all three cards for about 75% of the price of a blaster of new stuff...and if you ask me, there's a lot more history, intrigue, and character in the three original A&G cards than there is anything available for purchase on a big box retailer's card aisle shelf!

If you are curious, here's the full checklist of cities available in the City Flags set:
Algiers
Amiens
Amsterdam
Baltimore
Biscay
Bordeaux
Boston
Bremen
Buenos Ayres
Calais
Carrara
Catalonia
Chicago
Corsica
Dublin
Edinburgh
Frankfort
Geneva
Genoa
Hamburg
Havana
Jerusalem
Leghorn
London
Lyons
Marseilles
Mecca
Modena
Montevideo
Naples
New Orleans
New Guatemala
New York
Nice
Oporto
Ostend
Paris
Philadelphia
Rotterdam
Rouen
St. Etienne
St. Louis
San Franscisco
Smyrna
Strasburg
Toulouse
Trieste
Valparaiso
Versailles
Washington

I don't imagine that I'll try to actually complete the full set (after all, I'm still working on a different original A&G set:  Fish from American Waters).