Old A&G and New A&G! (Including a White Whale for any Original A&G Collector!)

 The past week was a great one for my personal collection thanks to a single eBay seller who had a few different Allen & Ginter cards that I needed.  In fact, this seller had something new and something old for me - a 2015 "Healthy Mind" card plus two original 1887 A&G cards!

Let's start with the new card - a Healthy Mind insert called Bird Watching.  

As someone who lives in a rural area, I know all about bird watching though I must confess that I don't personally watch the birds much (we don't feed the birds either).  I am amused by the photo that Topps chose here...the lady who is supposedly bird watching looks like she is doing so in the middle of a jungle or something.  Not quite the "check out the Cardinals at the feeder" type of bird watching that I was imagining!

Heading way, way back in time - here's the real reason why I bought from this particular eBay seller:  

That card may not look like much but it's actually a super, super short print from the Flags of All Nations set.  This card, along with the (even rarer?) Roumania card, are by far the most difficult cards to find in the entire set...so I don't even care about the condition here, simply acquiring any copy of the card is more than I honestly figured I'd ever be able to do for my collection!  

In addition to the Corea card, I also was able to grab one more needed card from the 1887 Flags of all Nations set from the same seller: 

That's the "plain background" version of the Italy card - there's also a "common fancy" version of this card where it seems that the fancy version is actually quite a bit easier to find as compared to the plain background card.  In fact, I've had the "common fancy" version of Italy for awhile now - here they are side-to-side for comparison:  

You may notice that the bottom of the cards are slightly different - another thing I've learned about this particular set now that I'm in the midst of collecting it is that there are a whole bunch of different versions of certain cards regarding both the design at the bottom of the card fronts as well as the design of the ribbon on the card backs.  It's a confusing mess that I've still not quite got a handle on but for now (famous last words) I'm not worrying about the different font versions - I'm simply trying to track down one of each main flag design (including the fancy/plain variations such as the Italy card above).

Overall, I was super happy with my purchase - it feels great to make progress on a pair of difficult sets (those 2015 A&G minis are quite rare too)!  Here's to many more similar mail days throughout the remainder of 2022!