It gives me great pleasure to announce that I have finally obtained a trading card that is more than a century old. True, I own baseball cards that are now 100 years old. But in recent days, I have had an itch for an original 1880s Allen & Ginter card that I had to scratch. Problem: Damn near any baseball guy from the 1887 set will cost a pretty penny.

So I created my own solution: Buy an 1889 Allen & Ginter “50 Fish from American Waters.”

The card found me more than me finding it. I hit my card shop before work Tuesday in search of additional Helmar packs like the ones I wrote about yesterday. What I ended up finding — in addition to two more packs — was this 111-year-old trading card.

Granted fish are not baseball players, and the market for these cards is relatively scarce. Hell, I bet lots of people didn’t even know they existed. But I like this card … and the $3 price tag certain helped rush me to the register.

Now you probably don’t give a crap about some card showing a fish. It didn’t face King Kelly. But the card really is something to marvel at. The image shown here is more than just another picture of a fish. It’s actually a lithograph, and when you look at it under the right light, you can see there is a metallic finish to the once-bright colors.

And while the front is colorful, it is the dull, monotone back that really catches my attention. I love the font used for the Allen & Ginter logo — very Greek-esque — and I like the catch phrase “You will catch one in each box of ten cigarettes.”

I had a few choices for century-old cardboard (Non Allen & Ginter, mostly Old Mill and other tobacco brands) at prices less than $10. I could have bought cards featuring birds or actresses from the 19th century, but I actually like fish — fishing is actually one of my hobbies. And now that I’ve acquired this Pampano card, I find myself in a position where I will be fishing for more species from this wonderful set. Among the highest on my want list are probably the Sturgeon and the Striped Bass.

This entry was posted on July 21, 2010 at 6:27 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags Allen & Ginter, baseball, baseball cards, King Kelly, sports, tobacco card, trading cards, vintage baseball cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.