🗞️ Antique 1888 W. Duke, Sons & Co. N138 Great Americans #HG Horace Greeley Tobacco Card SGC 5 – The Sportscard Guaranty SGC 5 Certified 1888 W. Duke, Sons & Co. “Great Americans” Series Tobacco Card Featuring Horace Greeley, Founder of the New-York Tribune, One of the Most Influential Newspaper Editors in the History of American Journalism, Issued Over 135 Years Ago in the Victorian Era of the American Tobacco Trade

🗞️ Before baseball cards were baseball cards, before the modern hobby existed, before grading companies and serial numbers and chromium surfaces – there were tobacco cards. Small, rectangular pieces of cardstock inserted into cigarette packages and tobacco tins by American manufacturers beginning in the 1870s and 1880s, designed to appeal to the collector instinct that exists in every human being who has ever been handed something small and beautiful and wondered what else was in the set. W. Duke, Sons & Co. of Durham, North Carolina, was one of the most prolific producers of these early tobacco cards, and their “Great Americans” series – issued in 1888 under the N138 catalog designation – featured the faces and biographical details of the most celebrated figures in American history and public life. Horace Greeley, card number HG, graded SGC 5 by Sportscard Guaranty: a piece of printed Americana that has survived more than a century and a third of American history in a condition that the graders deemed Excellent.

🗞️ Horace Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire, and became the most influential newspaper editor of the 19th century – the founder of the New-York Tribune in 1841, one of the most widely circulated and most widely respected newspapers in the country, a publication that shaped public opinion on abolition, westward expansion, and the politics of the era with a editorial voice that Greeley wielded with unusual directness and unusual confidence. The phrase “Go West, young man” is most commonly attributed to him, capturing the expansionist spirit of mid-century America in four words that became a motto for a generation. He ran for president in 1872 as the Liberal Republican and Democratic candidate against Ulysses S. Grant, losing decisively, and died on November 29, 1872, before the Electoral College met. His face on a tobacco card issued sixteen years after his death reflects the depth of his cultural imprint – he remained a figure notable enough to include in a series of “Great Americans” more than a decade after his passing. For the collector drawn to Victorian-era paper history, early American tobacco ephemera, or the intersection of journalism history and the first generation of the American card-collecting tradition, this 1888 W. Duke, Sons & Co. N138 Horace Greeley SGC 5 is an artifact from a world that no longer exists. Condition: NOS.

🗞️ Horace Greeley. New-York Tribune. Amherst, New Hampshire. 1811-1872. W. Duke, Sons & Co. N138. Great Americans. 1888. Tobacco Card. Victorian Era. SGC 5. Hall of Fame Sports Memorabilia. Condition: NOS.