Another Vintage Piece of Cardboard from 1888!

There are many things in today's society that I think we tend to take for granted just how amazing they actually are.  For example, the US Mail system.  It's truly wondrous that you can put a little sticker on an envelope (for a few cents), and then a few days later that envelope might end up halfway across the country! 

As card collectors, the US Mail is vitally important, but another easily overlooked aspect of card collecting is just how easy it is to find and acquire cards today.  

I'm someone who lives in the country; the nearest card show to me is about two hours north.  I have no hobby shops near me.  My local big box store is Wal-Mart, and they scarcely stock baseball cards (plenty of Yu-Gi-Oh there, though, if that's your thing).  In short, if I had to rely on local means to get baseball cards, I'd be completely out of luck (I used to buy packs at my local CVS, but they stopped carrying sports cards years and years ago).  

Enter sites like COMC, TCDB, and, of course, eBay.  Nowadays, I can find almost any card I need - no matter how obscure. Of course, the cost of said card might not be within my budget, but there's always the chance I'll find what I want at an affordable price.  

And that brings me to today's mailbag:

That's an original card from 1888 Allen & Ginter, specifically the City Flags set.  This is a set that I've been working on collecting for a few years now, and it always amazes me whenever I get a new card for my set that I'm actually able to obtain original cards from well over 100 years ago!  

Here's what's amazing to me: I'm now within three cards of completing my second original Allen & Ginter set from the 1800s.  That's absolutely bonkers, to think that someone like me on a relatively shoestring card budget is now nearly done with two full sets of little bits of cardboard from the 1800s.  It's bonkers that the cards have existed that long, and it's even more bonkers that so many of them now reside in one of my set binders!

Heck, if I can find the three cards below, then I'll have two full sets from the 1800s fully built!

• Nice
• Rouen
• Saint-Etienne

If you couldn't tell from my above tone, I'm pretty pumped up about my card of the city of Rotterdam.  All of a sudden, it doesn't seem quite so crazy that I might be able to build the full City Flags set!