1889 Goodwin Games and Sports - N165

 The 1889 Goodwin Games and Sports set, designated N165 in the American Card Catalog (ACC) is a pretty cool 50 card set.

The N165 set includes 50 cards of several different games and sports.  They picture a portrait of a woman in front of a scene of the subject game or sport.  There are four baseball cards in the set and one football card.  The football card is one of the earliest cards issued featuring the sport.  

There are cards of bowling, boxing, cricket and lacrosse among others.  The baseball cards and football card are the most popular (not surprisingly) and they command the highest prices for cards in the set.  

I recently picked up an example of one of the baseball subjects (shown below).  The four different baseball cards feature a batter, pitcher, catcher and fielder.  I picked up the batter card.  It was not expensive but the condition is quite low so that may have had some influence on the price.  It was in an auction lot of three cards, the other two cards being N28 Allen & Ginter cards of boxer Jack Dempsey and a billiards player.

All of the cards in the set are horizontally laid out and they measure about 1 1/2" x 2 3/4".  They are cool little cards and it's a neat set to collect.  Even if you just go for the four baseball cards.  

The checklist is below.

1. Ancient Tournament
2. Archery
3. Baseball (batter)
4. Baseball (catcher)
5. Baseball (fielder)
6. Baseball (pitcher)
7. Bicycling
8. Billiards
9. Bowling
10. Boxing
11. Bull Fighting
12. Canoeing
13. Chariot Race
14. Club Swinging
15. Coasting
16. Coursing
17. Cricket
18. Curling
19. Dumbbell Raising
20. Fencing
21. Fishing
22. Football
23. Foot Race
24. Fox Hunt
25. Gladiators
26. Hand Ball
27. Hare and Hounds
28. High Jumping
29. Hurdle Race
30. Ice Yachting
31. Lacrosse
32. Lawn Tennis
33. Pedestrian Contest
34. Pigeon Shooting
35. Pistol Shooting
36. Pole Vaulting
37. Polo
38. Putting the Shot
39. Quoits
40. Roller Skating
41. Rowing
42. Running Race
43. Shuttlecock
44. Skating
45. Skittles
46. Snow Shoeing
47. Swimming
48. Throwing the Hammer
49. Tobogganing
50. Yachting

There is another piece that goes along with this set.  Goodwin put out an album, designated A38 in the ACC.  It has very colorful front and back covers (pictured below) and the pages have images of all 50 cards in the set.  A collector in 1889 could paste their cards in the album and try to complete the set with a very nice finished product when the album was completed.

Front Cover

Back Cover

Here are some pics of the other pages and the inside cover.

Inside Cover

The last page shown here is especially nice as it has a baseball scene on the page and includes the spot for the football card.  

The albums are tough to find complete and sometimes collectors will see individual pages when a complete album has been separated.  Also, people will sometimes cut the card images out of the pages and sell those.  Those cut outs will have the other side of the page as their backs instead of the checklist that is found on the actual cards so they are quite easy to identify.  

So that's about it for this set/  I find it to be a cool set.  I like the artwork and different assortment of sports and games.  The album is pretty cool too.  

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one.