Coffee Cans

Coffee has been a popular drink since the late seventeenth century. Originally, green beans were sold, and the consumer had to roast and grind them before making the beverage. By the nineteenth century, there were stores that roasted and ground coffee. The first unground roasted beans or ground coffee was sold in paper bags, and […]

Canned Goods

Thomas Huntley started packing biscuits in tins in England about 1830, when his brother, a tinsmith, developed a water-tight package for shipping biscuits. William Underwood of London, England, came to Boston in 1821 and sold pickles, sauces, and other foods in glass jars and tin cans. By 1835 he was offering canned tomatoes. He also […]

Labels

In the early nineteenth century, cans were labeled with printed or engraved labels or with tin-soldered metal labels. The oldest known paper food can label in America is a steel engraving of tomatoes by Rechbow and Larne of New York, dating from the mid-nineteenth century. Any paper-labeled can that can be dated before 1900 is […]

The History Of Twentieth-Century Advertising – a collector’s view

Advertising has taken many forms. Trade cards were introduced about 1870 but lost favor by about 1910. Bookmarks were popular giveaways promoting stores and products from 1880 to 1915. The tin advertising tray was first used in the 1880s and is still popular. Giveaways and point-of-sale items—such as signs, furniture, pot-scrapers, puzzles, recipe books, ashtrays, […]

Tin Cans

The first known metal containers for food or tobacco were used in England about 1780. Snuff was sold in small lead drums marked with engraved paper labels. Large metal drums were used to store varnish by the early nineteenth century. Cans, or canisters as they were first known, were important because they solved a problem. […]

Lithograph on Cans

Some containers had embossed or raised designs. A method of printing on metal cans was invented in about 1850. Lithography was done directly on the tin about 1875, when the process was developed and patented by Robert Barclay and John Doyle Fry in England. The printing process was successful, and the elaborately designed cans were […]

Other Printed Ephemera

Unusual bits of printed paper—from labels to paper napkins—are known as ephemera. There isn’t space enough to list all the old paper items that are interesting to collectors but it is worth noting that there are large, well-documented museum collections of valentines, advertising cards, baseball cards, broadsides, railroad passes, circus posters, and other paper memorabilia. […]

Dating Postcards

The earliest picture postcards mailed in the United States were probably the souvenir cards sold at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The message was written on the picture side of the penny postcard (not the address side) before March 1907, or it cost 2¢ to mail. By 1908 postcards had become extremely […]

Newspapers

Old newspapers are not as valuable as most beginners believe. Some newspapers published in America from 1690 to 1860 are important, but most libraries today keep copies on microfilm, not the original, fragile paper. Do not destroy any pre-1860 newspaper before contacting a local historical society or an antiquarian bookseller. Some newspapers printed after 1860 […]

Old Historic Newspapers

There are a few single issues of important old historic newspapers, but they have been reprinted so often that the chance of having an original is slight. The Library of Congress Serial and Government Publications Division publishes information circulars that tell how to distinguish originals and copies of eighteen famous issues. The circulars are on […]