Featured Victorian trade cards

chromolithography is one of the types of prints i also like to collect and sell, When i can find them. I have these two, Not trade cards but are 71/2 x 9 1/2 sheets, maybe book plates?
Mikey

 

Don't know why the first came up twice ?

 

Sure, Mikey.

 

Mikey, I've sold chromo prints, too. There's something about chromolithographs I really love.

Your dolly prints are lovely, and you may be right that they were book plates, especially since they have captions at the bottom. Or I think it's possible they may have been sold as stand alone prints, too, meant either to frame or paste into scrap albums.

I've read that the advent of chromos allowed nonwealthy people to have affordable art in their homes for the first time.

Re the repeated image... it happened to me, too, when I clicked to insert both the individual images and the one for inserting all images.

 

Here is the one that I have. It may not be considered a trade card, but is definitely an advertisement. It's about the same size as a cabinet card photograph. Mary Anderson, the woman on the card, was a very popular actress in the 19th century. She was also very photogenic.

 

Those are scraped areas on the background near her face... damage to the card. Also, there is nothing on the back of the card except remnants of paper glued to it, probably from a scrapbook.

 

Great card, Fig!

I'd call it a Victorian trade card.

 

Don, I can see why you collected those, and how that particular type of card would also be related to your bottle collections.

I went to your search link and clicked on one of the images and went to this page:

http://www.bottlepickers.com/bottle_articles318.htm

 

I've had quite a few J.C. Ayer's cards over the years. The company was in Lowell MA, which is about 1/2 hour from me but, um, before my time.

 

This is an Ayer's card that's one of my favorites. I particularly like ones with fantasy images.

 

Interesting... I didn't know companies supplied postage this way.

Did the stamps differ in some way from regular ones, or have they just been found somehow attached to the advertising items?

 

Thanks for the info and link. That really is interesting... I had no idea postage stamps were ever used as currency.

I wonder if Ayer had a large number left when the encased postage stopped being used and, if so, what they did with them.

 

Until quite recently you could always bring unused stamps back to the PO for full face value. Every US postage stamp ever made is still usable at face value as long as it is uncancelled.