Video: A Curious History of Trading Cards: What Advertising Was Like in the 19th Century and How It Was Collected
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
At the end of the 19th century, advertising began to creep into people's daily lives. At that time, many were not yet accustomed to intrusive ads, and they aroused genuine interest, and cards with products became collectible.
A hundred years ago, almost anyone could become an unwitting ad collector. Many people from the middle and upper class collected what were called “merchandise cards”. These picture cartons were often attached to purchased items, especially groceries. Special albums were even released to decorate the collection, and collectors exchanged missing copies.
More than 6500 cards of various goods are known to modern researchers. Many of them attribute beneficial and even healing properties to the advertised products. The enticing slogans claim that it is even possible to cure illness and drunkenness. And the ad for Hires Root Beer promises to "cleanse the blood."
Victorian era ads weren't limited to the promise of health. The 100-year-old cards also boded a pleasant holiday, such as the Pabst beer ad depicting “luxury on the high seas”.
Victorian people also loved art, so advertisers carefully borrowed elements from artists, poets, and writers. This is why the portrait of Rembrandt, who died in 1669, adorned the Enterprise flour trading card.
A technological innovation contributed to the high popularity of trading cards: color printing. The magazines published at that time, even the most expensive ones, were black and white, less often two-color. That is why color applications in the form of cards have become widespread. Ironically, trading cards fell out of fashion when magazines began printing color ads themselves.
In our time, ads have become much more frivolous and "aggressive". So, in a scandalous advertisement for a Dutch clothing company men and women have reversed roles.
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