Plate 15, from the Fans of the Period series (N7) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands

In 1888, Allen & Ginter began to release cigarette card sets as promotional items for its cigarette brands. Most part of the collection consisting of illustrated cards with a few collections of photographs. Topics varied from birds and wild animals to American Indian chiefs or flags of the world. Allen & Ginter's baseball cards were the first of the tobacco era baseball cards ever produced for distribution on a national level. The most popular and highly sought after of these sets is the N28 and N29 "World's Champions" series, released in 1887.

Allen and Ginter, a tobacco manufacturing company founded in 1865 by John Allen and Lewis Ginter in Richmond, Virginia, created the first cigarette cards for collecting and trading in the United States. The first tobacco company to employ female labor, by 1886 they had 1,100 employees, predominantly girls, who rolled the cigarettes. The Company history ended when in 1880, Allen and Ginter offered a prize for the invention of the machine able to roll cigarettes. Inventor James Albert Bonsack won the prize. But all but one of the large tobacco manufacturers, including Allen and Ginter itself, declined to buy the machine because it was not 100% reliable. James Buchanan Duke did buy the machine invention in 1885 and by 1890 he had consolidated his four major competitors, including Allen & Ginter, and formed the American Tobacco Company. The "Allen & Ginter Company" was no more, but Lewis Ginter sat on the board of the American Tobacco Company.

Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, introduced the subject of colored lithography in 1818. Printers in other countries, such as France and England, were also started producing color prints. The first American chromolithograph—a portrait of Reverend F. W. P. Greenwood—was created by William Sharp in 1840. Chromolithographs became so popular in American culture that the era has been labeled as "chromo civilization". During the Victorian times, chromolithographs populated children's and fine arts publications, as well as advertising art, in trade cards, labels, and posters. They were also used for advertisements, popular prints, and medical or scientific books.

A handheld fan, or simply a hand fan, is any broad, flat surface that is waved back and forth to create an airflow. Generally, purpose-made handheld fans are folding fans, which are shaped like a sector of a circle and made of a thin material (such as paper or feathers) mounted on slats that revolve around a pivot so that it can be closed when not in use. Hand fans were used before mechanical fans were invented. Handheld fans have been used for thousands of years, with the earliest known examples dating back to ancient Egypt and China. These early fans were made from a variety of materials, including feathers, parchment, and palm leaves, and were used for both practical and ceremonial purposes. In ancient Rome, fans were also used for both cooling and as a decorative accessories. The first handheld fans as we know them today, made from paper or other lightweight materials and mounted on sticks, were probably invented in Japan or China during the 9th or 10th century. These fans gradually spread to other parts of the world and became popular in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.