🏛️ Antique 1888 W. Duke Sons & Co. N76 Great Americans — William Penn — Tobacco Card — SGC 1 Authentic — Richmond, Virginia — American Card Catalog N76 — Tobacco Insert Card — Over 135 Years Old — SGC Certified Authentic

🏛️ Before baseball cards, before sports trading cards as a category, before the modern hobby existed in any form recognizable to today's collector, there were tobacco inserts — small, illustrated paper cards included in cigarette and tobacco packages to stiffen the pack and encourage brand loyalty through collectible series that buyers would pursue across many purchases. W. Duke Sons & Co. of Richmond, Virginia, was one of the dominant tobacco companies of the late 19th century and one of the earliest producers of collectible tobacco card series in American history. Their N76 Great Americans series, produced in 1888, features illustrations of notable historical figures — and William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania and the namesake of Philadelphia, is among the most historically significant subjects in the entire N76 series. This card, certified authentic by SGC, is a surviving piece of American printing history from 1888 — now over 135 years old. Condition: NOS.

🌟 W. Duke Sons & Co. — The Great Americans Series — N76

W. Duke Sons & Co. was a predecessor to what would become the American Tobacco Company — one of the most powerful commercial entities in 19th-century American business history, built by James Buchanan Duke and his family into a tobacco empire that eventually controlled most of the American tobacco market. Their tobacco card series from the 1880s, including the N76 Great Americans, were produced in an era of fierce competition with Allen & Ginter and other tobacco companies — a competition that produced an extraordinary variety of collectible card series that now sit as antique artifacts of Victorian American commercial printing. Condition: NOS.

🏛️ William Penn — The Founder of Pennsylvania — 1644–1718

William Penn, the English Quaker statesman and philosopher who founded the Province of Pennsylvania in 1682, is one of the most important figures in early American colonial history — a founder whose commitment to religious tolerance, fair dealings with Native American peoples, and democratic governance principles left a permanent mark on the political philosophy of the American experiment. His image on a W. Duke Sons & Co. tobacco card from 1888 places him in the Victorian American tradition of celebrating historical heroes through commercial paper collectibles, and the survival of this card into the present day is a small miracle of paper preservation across 137 years of American history. Condition: NOS.

📋 SGC 1 Authentic — The Grade That Matters for 1888 Paper

SGC (Sportscards Guaranty Company) certification confirms this card as an authentic 1888 W. Duke Sons N76 Great Americans tobacco card — a genuine piece of 19th-century American printing rather than a reproduction. The SGC 1 grade reflects the wear consistent with 137 years of survival, and for a tobacco card from 1888, the fact of survival and authentication is itself the story: most paper products from this era were discarded, lost, or destroyed, and every authenticated survivor is a genuine antique artifact. Condition: NOS.

🏛️⭐ W. Duke Sons & Co. Richmond, Virginia. 1888. The tobacco card era. The Great Americans. N76. William Penn. The founder of Pennsylvania. 1682. Religious tolerance. Democratic governance. The colonial visionary. 137 years later. Authentic. Certified. SGC. An antique piece of American history in collectible card form. Condition: NOS.