N20 Allen & Ginter Prize & Game Chickens 17: Silver-Pencilled Hamburgh

I feel like my last couple of posts have been a little negative, so I'm looking to inject a little optimism into my blog with this post. One set that I just can't feel bad about is the N20 Allen & Ginter Fifty Prize & Game Chickens tobacco card set that was printed around 125 years ago. Cards from the set are somewhat readily available, but not always at prices I am able to stomach. Recently a seller posted a bunch of them on eBay and I compared the offerings to my checklist and placed bids on all the ones I needed that were in acceptable shape. For me, acceptable shape means that the picture and text on the front is intact and there is no paper loss on the back. Corners and centering don't matter to me unless they affect the picture. I wound up winning several of them, so I'll have plenty of chicken cards to post in the near future.

This first card features the Silver-Pencilled Hamburgh (or Hamburg if you prefer). Usually the card front specifies whether the male or female is pictured, but this one doesn't. This illustration shows a rooster, with a nice backdrop of grass and mountains in the distance. Although technically I got all of the cards in this batch at the same time, if you go by order of posting this is my 17th card from the set.

Silver Pencilled Hamburgs, image courtesy of FeatherSite-The Poultry Page

Here's a photograph of the male and female of the breed. According to the internet there are several varieties of Hamburgh (I've already shown off the Silver-Spangled Hamburgh) and they are probably better for eggs than for meat, being a small- to medium-sized bird. Although the comb on the rooster in the picture looks pretty small compared to the comb on the rooster on the card, I've seen other photographs of roosters with longer combs on their heads. The comb on the rooster on the card is still exaggerated quite a bit, though, in my opinion.

It's always nice to get a stack of cardboard in the mail, especially trading cards whose printing date was closer to the American Revolutionary War(!) than it was to today. There were some really nice cards in this batch, and I'm looking forward to showing them all off.