Trade Cards

An entire volume could be written on this subject (and many have been). The earliest tradecards appeared at the beginning of the 17th century in London. These were mainly used for directing customers to merchant's stores (since there was no formal street numbering system in place at the time).

Newspapers of the time were not well developed and printing illustrations was exceedingly difficult and labor-intensive. The earliest forms of tradecards were printed by the woodcut or letterpress, which tended to be expensive. By the 18th century, copperplate engraving became the most popular method. Up to the 19th century, tradecards were still done in monotones, or with simple tints. A few were hand-colored and these are greatly prized by today's collectors.

Trade cards filled a real need and, not surprisingly, their popularity soared. They were the most effective and inexpensive advertising available. As businesses grew, so did the production, distribution and complexity of tradecards. Around 1830, multiple-color lithography became an established printing method. Prior to this, much of the lithography was done on stones. The slow, cumbersome and expensive method of etching stones was replaced in the 1850's by metal plates, which made printing less expensive and easier to mass produce.

Color printing of trade cards did not become widely popular in America until after the Civil War. In 1876, the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition was a major venue for printers to hand out advertising of their card-production services. Though multi-colored cards had been in use for a while, this exhibition acted as a springboard for larger scale use of the multi-color trade card. Almost overnight, trade cards started appearing in every major city in America, especially in the East.

Over the next decade, trade cards began to appear in stores throughout the country. Addressing a wide variety of products from food to sewing machines to horse collars to axle grease, they became for a time nearly omnipresent. Since most households engaged in their own baking, sewing and farming, trade cards relating to these industries were found in great abundance.

Around the turn of the 20th century, technological advances made the distribution of newspapers and periodicals more practical and less expensive. Print advertising suddenly became more affordable and more widespread. The number of trade cards being produced started to plummet.

New regulations established by the newly-formed Food and Drug Administration resulted in a great reduction in advertising for patent medicines. This significantly affected producers of trade cards and many went out of business altogether. In addition, the US Post Office introduced new postal regulations in 1898 which made postcards more affordable. Post cards became a national craze around the turn-of-the-century, and trade cards all but disappeared from the advertising scene by the end of the 1904 World's Fair. Young people saw trade cards as too "old fashioned" to collect, and consumers found the ads in magazines and newspapers more relevant and timely. By the mid-1910's, few new trade cards could be found and by the 1920's they had essentially disappeared altogether.

Today's trade cards are regarded as novelties -- and yet, it is truly surprising how effective they still can be! Many a businessperson has been pleasantly astonished by the amount of business produced by that little pile of cards set out by the counter.