Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
TRADE CARDS
TRADE CARDS. Advertising used between 1880-1900. During the Victorian era, one of the favorite pastimes was collecting small, illustrated advertising cards that were called trade cards. These cards evolved from cards of the late 1700s used by tradesmen to advertise their services.
Although examples from the early 1800s exist, it was not until the spread of color lithography in the 1870s that trade cards became plentiful. Tradecards were about the size of a 3x5 index card and generally had nice pictures with advertising on the front; there was often full advertising text (and sometimes testimonials) on the back.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s thousands of different trade cards were produced for the American public. Because of the coloring, they became highly desirable and many ladies started to collect them. Some trade cards were beautiful. Others were funny, and some had puzzles.
Trade cards can be classified into two types. Generic cards could be applied to any product. The backs were generally blank so they that could be printed by the advertiser. There was also usually a blank box on the front for the advertiser. The same stock card could be used by multiple advertisers. Custom cards were produced by or for specific companies which did not share their designs with other firms. These cards often pictured the product being advertised.
Local merchants handed trade cards out for free as a cheap and effective way to advertise products and services. Almost every type of product or service imaginable was advertised in this way. Trade cards for patent medicines and various practitioners such as physicians, dentists and optometrists are among the most prized to collectors.
Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, stoves, and farm equipment.
The popularity of trade cards peaked around 1890, and then almost completely faded by the early 1900s. Other forms of advertising in color, such as magazines, became more cost effective.
