PBA Galleries

200 page trade card album filled with over 1300 individual cards. The album, which is 12x17x3” and weighs 19 lbs. and is one of the more sturdy albums we have ever seen. While many Victorian scrapbooks are found with cheap paper and fragile bindings that often are falling apart or in bad condition, the pages in this album are of .012 heavy stock, and the half leather binding is extremely strong with good hinges, each page is reinforced with a muslin strip in the gutter. This is an album that should stay together as an example of a wonderful Victorian trade card album. 

The cards are mostly stock cards, all in color, imprinted by various businesses largely located in the Northeast, mostly Massachusetts. There are many complete sets and series, including the complete Sollers Shoe alphabets, the series reproducing worldwide paper money, 2 sets of the cards of worldwide stamps, and hundreds of other stock series, some French but mostly of American manufacture. The cards themselves are in fine condition, and none are border trimmed. There are scattered pages that contain German scrap die cuts and a few holiday cards, but most of the cards contain advertising or were designed to be imprinted as such. A fabulous collection of examples of 19th century chromolithography. The spine of the binding is gilt stamped, “Card Album” with the date 1881.