Thursday, June 12, 2014

At Lee's Comic Rack: Novelty ads from 1900, 1902, and 1903.

Mind reading, performing skeletons, seebackroscopes, and machines that deliver fun electric shocks are just some of the items you'll encounter for sale in these 110+-year-old ad "cuts" scanned by me from twelve American Boy magazines.  Pre-Johnson Smith & Co., even.  Samples:





See junk items our great-great-grandparents may (or may not) have bought by mail, any one of which would fetch nice prices on eBay all these decades later:
Lee's Comic Rack: Novelty ads, 1900, 1902, 1903


Lee

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, my dad used to tell me his father, as a kid, ordered a skeleton from the American Boy magazine, and once he had it, it would give my grandfather nightmares! Can you kindly tell me what the month/day/year is of the issue your skeleton ad appears in? Thanks! Enjoying your blog. Sincerely, William in southern Louisiana

Lee Hartsfeld said...

William,

Cool story! Thanks for sharing. And... the ad appeared in the Jan., 1902 American Boy issue (Vol. 3, No. 3).

Interesting to note that, at 10 cents, the skeleton cost as much as a single issue of American Boy!