Unusual 1885 Trade Card for McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. WithCamels

Description: This Unusual 1885 Trade Card for McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. Has Camels on the back page. This card has four pages. The cover page has a beautiful woman on it with wheat in her hat and in her gloved hand. There is a trellis with reds growing on it.

The second page has a reaping machine pulled by horses. The third page has an Iron Mower at work. And on the back page it says One of five machines at work on the same estate, drawn by camels. The McCormick at work in Asiatic Russia. Brief History of Trade Cards by Ben Crane.

Over a century ago, during the Victorian era, one of the favorite pastimes was collecting small, illustrated advertising cards that we now call trade cards. These trade 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. By the 1880s, trade cards had become a major way of advertising America's products and services, and a trip to the store usually brought back some of these attractive, brightly-colored cards to be pasted into a scrapbook. Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were in the categories of: medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, stoves, and farm.

E popularity of trade cards peaked around 1890, and then almost completely faded by the early 1900s when other forms of advertising in color, such as magazines, became more cost effective. Although trade card collecting began over 100 years ago, today's strong interest in trade cards began relatively recently. Measures 4" W x 6-1/4" H. Condition: Corners and edges are worn. A little scuffing on the back on the left edge.

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