Tradecards

December 18, 2006 5:15 PM

Tradecards.
posted by hama7 (9 comments total)

Great stuff. I love those metamorphics - knees into bald heads!
posted by tellurian at 5:28 PM on December 18, 2006

Well, this is just the coolest shit ever.
Nice post.
posted by squidfartz at 7:46 PM on December 18, 2006

wow, those tradecards are way more interesting than I thought they'd be.

A brief history:
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...Articles about the various kinds of tradecards.

The metamorphics (great name) are delightful and weird (when they're not typically racist).

Wonderful Victorian illustrations of transportation, medical and dental, food and lots more.
posted by nickyskye at 7:49 PM on December 18, 2006

My dad had (or has?) hundreds of these things. We found an entire book of them when he bought our first house from a couple of 80 year old sisters. It's nice to be able to learn more about them online, 30+ years later.
posted by bashos_frog at 8:45 PM on December 18, 2006

Wow, there's so much there; I love the cards predicting life in the year 2000 (I only wish gorgeous scenes like this were a little bigger). This'll take hours to enjoy. Awesome ephemera, hama7, thanks!
posted by mediareport at 8:48 PM on December 18, 2006

Thanks for this.

Harvard also have a small exhibition and allegedly large dbase (I say allegedly because it's a bit of a pain to use and many examples I saw hardly fall into the trade card category.

Better yet is Brooklyn Public Library's Fulton Street Trade Card Collection - 245 cards and these are nicely large images. I am fairly certain there are other collections about. I can't quite remember where they are at the mo'.
posted by peacay at 9:51 PM on December 18, 2006

Thanks for pointing out the One Hundred Years Hence collection of cards mediareport. I was fascinated how many of the predictions came true and the ones that haven't, yet.

Nice collection peacay.
posted by nickyskye at 11:16 PM on December 18, 2006

RE Life in 2000, I like no. 3 -- "City improvements up to date." So wistful. And given the latest news on the fate of the North Pole, the "summer pole" depicted in #5 may have only been a few years off in its estimate.
posted by Tuffy at 11:18 PM on December 18, 2006

50 years too early
posted by vbfg at 1:48 AM on December 19, 2006