Trade cards were made for merchants to advertise their products, much like a handbill or flyer. Some were specifically made for said merchant, others had a blank box where the merchant could stamp his name.
The cards as we know, N, T & E were inserts or premiums to entice a customer to buy the product, whether it was candy or tobacco. Nearly all of these were comprised of some type of "set" to encourage repeat buying to obtain all of them.
While both are "cards", they had very different intended purposes.
Trade cards were pretty much gone by 1900.
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