Trade Card for Hop Ointment, "The National Remedy for the Skin," Hop Pill Co., 1887

In the last third of the nineteenth century, an unprecedented variety of consumer goods flooded the American market. Some enterprising advertisers sought to distinguish their products from the competition, distributing trade cards that doubled as a bookmark. Americans enjoyed and often saved the popular little advertisements, which survive as historical records of consumerism in the United States.