N20 Allen & Ginter Prize & Game Chickens 23: Andalusian Cock

This Andalusian Cock card is my 23rd from the 50-card N20 1891 Allen & Ginter Fifty Prize & Game Chickens set. Like the others I've been posting recently, I got this from someone who posted a large number of cards from the set on eBay all at once. I came away with a couple handfuls of them, which was a huge boost to a project that had pretty much been on the back burner for 9 months. It wasn't for lack of looking, but these cards are 125 years old and it's not every day that someone posts one that is both a) in decent shape and b) in my price range.

Andalusian Rooster; Photo from FeatherSite

Andalusians are a blue-hued chicken that probably originated in Spain. They are hardy, forage well, and lay a lot of eggs, so apparently that makes them a pretty popular breed for backyard flocks. Every clutch of chickens will produce black and splash (multi-colored) birds, but whoever is in charge of chicken shows has deemed that only blue Andalusians can be shown. You still need the black and splash birds in your breeding stock, though, as the blue color tends to fade and you have to breed the black ones back into the pool to darken it up. That tells me that it doesn't matter whether you're running a fashion show for people or birds, there is always a committee there who are more than happy to tell you that you're doing it wrong.

I was watching a video a few months ago where a bonsai tree club invited an expert to come in and judge all of their trees, and the guy was just ripping these people apart. He was like, "Just the whole view of this tree does not flow. This branch is out of place, and I don't know what you're doing here. But if you turn the tree like this," and he moved the pot like 1/4-inch counter-clockwise, "it changes the whole view of the tree and hides those issues you've caused." And these people were just eating it up and apologizing for their crimes against bonsai and making excuses and it was awful. But we really are like that as humans. We all have passions and points of expertise that we use to put other people down, and we also have insecurities and fears that other people can use to put us down. I don't know what to do about it, but when it comes to card collecting it might start by letting other people collect the way they choose without bad-mouthing them or being critical of their opinions in the comments section. Just something I was thinking about this evening.

I am rapidly approaching the halfway mark in this set. I hope that I will continue to have success in finding the rest of the cards in the checklist.