The Young Auctioneer, 1884 Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co (A&P) Large Trade Card

Regular price $25.00

Too fun to resist, and I thought surely this one would make the perfect gift for the runner of an auction house, or for someone regularly on the other end of things, watching things as they are going going gone! I really love the increasingly distressed face of this child, and it seems to be quite a rare one--an early trade card for the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co, which would go on top become A&P.

(Founded in 1859 as "Gilman & Company", within a few years the firm opened a small chain of retail tea and coffee stores in NYC and operated a national mail order business. The firm grew to 70 stores by 1878, when its founder George Gilman passed management to George Huntington Hartford, who turned A&P into the country's first grocery chain. In 1930, A&P, by then the world's largest retailer, reached $2.9 billion in sales ($47 billion today) with 16,000 stores. A&P's decline began in the early 1950s, when they failed to keep pace with competitors that opened larger supermarkets with more modern features.)

8 1/2" x 4 1/16" and in very good condition, with a little edge wear at lower right, minor.