Trade Cards
Before magazines and the internet, colorful trade cards were essential marketing tools for mechanical banks and other goods. Often rarer than the banks themselves, surviving multicolored cards are now prized collector items in their own right.
Trade Cards: Fragile Advertisements More Rare Than the Banks They Sold
Before there was the Internet or even magazines, to sell their merchandise, salesmen, distributors and manufacturers produced papers that could be given away known as trade cards to advertise their goods. They came either monotoned or multicolored and due to their frailty, most have been destroyed over the years. In some senses a rare trade card can be rarer than the bank it advertises. Obviously, the multicolored ones are more valuable.