Trade cards

These small, esoteric ‘General Store’ giveaways were the lithographers’ ultimate success story for catchy advertising from about 1865-1905. The ones that really have nice color images are amazing considering that they were printed with a four-color palette: red, yellow, blue and black; with each color being added to a sheet separately and in succession using a ‘stone’ that was engraved with the image in reverse. Most trade cards were about 3×5 inches, but some were smaller or larger, and still others were made as folders with several pages; in some cases almost poster-size images would be discovered when the folder was opened up to full size.