A Treasure Trove of Original Allen & Ginter cards from 1887! (Part 1)

Not all that long ago, I made an eBay purchase of a lot of 1887 Allen & Ginter Flags of All Nations cards.  This is one (of two) original Allen & Ginter sets that I'm currently attempting to build (the other being the 1888 Allen & Ginter City Flags set).  

In total, the Flags of All Nations set contains 58 cards (counting the various variations).  Thanks to this one eBay purchase, I was able to land 12 new cards for my collection (good for 20.9% of the set)!  

France:

A number of the cards in this set come with two versions - usually a "plain background" and a "fancy background."  This card of France is an example of a "fancy background" variation.  I can't be sure, but it seems like the plain background versions are actually rarer than the fancy backgrounds, at least that seems to be how my want list is shaping up!

Hawaiian Islands:

I love the birds on this one, makes the Hawaiian Islands feel all that much more magical!  I'm guessing for most people in 1887, Hawaii was a magical, almost mythical place since travel was so arduous!

Holland:

Another country with two versions, this one being the "fancy background" variation once again.  You can probably tell from this card (and many of the others in today's post) that I don't care much about the overall condition of the card.  I'm a set collector at heart and I'd much rather have the full set for not as much money than have a small chunk of a set but have those particular cards grade high.  Also, who cares about card grades anyway, we are talking about cards that are 134 years old!!

Japan:

Japan is on my list of countries I'd like to visit someday.  I'm not big on crowds though, so I'm guessing there's a lot of Japan that would make me quite uncomfortable (I envision Japan as being chronically crowded, perhaps I'm wrong about that).  Still, someday I'll get there.  Maybe.

Peru:

One of the nicer card fronts from the lot I bought, this card of Peru is quite beautiful.  I'm constantly amazed at how great the original Allen & Ginter cards look over 130 years after they were printed.  

Royal Standard of Great Britain:

This is another card with two variations, but this one is a little different in that the variation is the color of the sun.  There's a yellow version of the sun (shown here) and a gold version of the sun (which I also own).  In fact, this is the only country flag card in the set where I own both variations!

That'll do it for today's post.  I'll show off the other half of what I landed in a future post - my poor scanner can only handle so many scans in a day (and I think I may have worn it out with all the scanning I did for yesterday's post)!