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Superior Potato Planter
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A hundred years ago, post cards helped keep folks in touch just as e-mail does today. The idea is the same but the post cards are more enduring. Sometimes, they're quite beautiful too.
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Farm folks in particular, perhaps because of their often-isolated farmsteads, came to rely on post cards for a quick 'hello.' As a consequence, manufacturers of all things rural soon discovered that post cards were an effective way to advertise.
Today, antique picture post cards and trade cards that feature farming and farm equipment remain an important link to our collective rural past.
Trade or advertising cards were printed by the thousands from the 1870s through the early 1900s, and given away over the counter by storekeepers and at such public events as fairs. Their most important attribute is their outstanding colors, which resulted from a recently perfected printing process of that time.
Picture post cards debuted at the 1893-94 Columbian World's Fair in Chicago, paving the way for the 'Golden Age' of post cards, which ran roughly from 1905 to 1915. During this same period, tremendous improvements began to be made to farm equipment. The changes can be documented on post cards from that time right through the present day. The heyday of farm trade or advertising cards peaked in the 1940s.
Today, the neat thing for many collectors is that cards popular during their fathers' and grandfathers' days on the farm show equipment and scenes of that era.
Some collectors are even lucky enough to find old family post cards among papers stored in their attics. Many a granddad had a pre-World War I Kodak box camera with which he photographed his family, his new car and, of course, his new tractor. And, he may have had his Kodak photos developed onto post card photo stock, creating unique picture post cards for subsequent generations to collect.