Arbuckle Brothers Coffee Company Texas Trade Card

NEW YORK ARBUCKLE BROTHERS COFFEE COMPANY

Publication: Arbuckle Bros Coffee Co, 1889, New York

3" x 5" pictorial map of Texas with a vignette of cowboys. Printed color. "In the late-1880s, the Arbuckle Brothers Coffee Company began including colorful advertising "trade cards" inside their coffee packages. This was a popular advertising practice at the turn-of-the-century for many companies. Colorful and whimsical cards, often printed as chromolithographs, were attractive to Victorians obsessed with collecting - - they went in albums, scrapbooks, extra-illustrated texts, and were traded among friends. This was also a time when postcards, greeting cards, calling cards, rewards of merit, and cartes-de-visites were all the rage. It was an age of ephemera. Arbuckle innovated on this craze by issuing their trade cards as collectible series - - banking on an idea that customers would choose to buy their coffee just to get the next card in a series. And they were right! Consumers loved completing the sets." Each card consisted of a map of a United States' state or territory with related illustrations on the front of the card and with information about a state on the verso. A complete collection would create Arbuckles' Illustrated Atlas of the United States of America. 1/4" closed tear to top edge and with light soiling and bump to 2 corners. Very good.