A neat little group of 5 original mid 19th century fish dealer trade cards. (Block printed on thin pasteboard card stock measuring on average 2.5 X 4.25 to 2.5 by 4.5 inches, these cards did triple duty as the equivalent of today’s business cards, as advertising cards and as labels pasted on wooden boxes and shipping crates.) While the vast majority of these were used as wood container labels and cast away, few examples seem to have survived yet we have acquired a small cash of original, unused cards in long storage from a Civil War era Thomaston, Maine estate. (Correspondence in the trunk indicate that the Thomaston fish merchant was shipping fish to the subject New York and Philadelphia dealers.) Nicely farmeable in a group or simply laid out individually as is, these original cards will fit nicely in any Civil War era setting.