May Yet Become/Wed President Trade Cards Set

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	May Yet Become/Wed President Trade Cards
Year	1800s
Size	2 3/4″ x 4 3/8″
Images	Color
Type	Trade
Number in Set	4

May Yet Become/Wed President Trade Cards Overview

These trade cards are believed to have been printed in the 1880s. While mostly a non-sports set, one card features a boy wielding what looks to be a baseball bat.

The baseball boy is easily the most desirable card in the set. In addition to the bat, he is shown smoking a cigarette. That is an interesting picture. Some children were said to become smokers by pursuing the tobacco cards that featured of baseball players. The card combines tobacco and baseball, which is interesting as those two things were interwoven through things like the T205 and T206 baseball card sets that were packaged with cigarettes.

The set focuses on four children – two boys and two girls. The cards for the boys say, ‘He may yet become President’ while the cards for the girls indicate, ‘She may yet wed a President.’ Each card includes a color picture against a tan and orange background.

The children appear to be somewhat poor as two of them have patches covering what is presumably torn clothing. The idea seems to be that they could aspire to something great despite facing some challenges.

Like other trade cards, these are printed on relatively thin card stock. Thus, they are susceptible to damage. In addition, the cards were used by numerous sponsors who added their names/advertisements on the fronts and backs.

The set shown here simply happens to be from the same sponsor, a druggist in New York. But they were used by a variety of different businesses around the country.

Variation

Few know that a rare variation for this set exists — at least for one of the cards in it.

While most cards featuring the boy with the baseball bat have the phrase, “He may yet become president” near his face, another version exists with that phrase at the bottom, as shown here.

The card with the variation uses the same image as is found on the other cards. But the placement of the phrase is different. It is possible that this variation is an earlier one as it may have been decided that space would be needed for advertisers to print their name at the bottom instead (as is seen on the cards listed above for St. John Druggist.

These cards are much rarer than the others. Additionally, I have only ever seen this different placement style with the baseball card. It is unknown (though, I suppose it would be likely) if this variation is found on the other cards.

It should also be noted that this variation is not merely the image being used on a different product, like a non-trade card. This variant card carries usually carries advertising on the back like the other trade cards.

Similarity to An Accurate Barometer Set

The ‘An Accurate Barometer’ trade card set is one of the numerous late 1800s issues out there. It includes a total of four cards featuring a boy with aspirations of playing baseball.

These cards could be mistaken for belonging together since they have similar drawings and, more importantly, the same type of font. Additionally, several of the ‘An Accurate Barometer’ trade cards also have the same background – white with a cream/tan colored splash. However, we can safely say these cards are not part of the ‘An Accurate Barometer’ set for a couple of reasons.

First, none of the cards have that tagline and, instead, have the ‘President’ tagline, signifying them as part of a different issue. Second, there are four cards in the President this set along with the four in the ‘An Accurate Barometer’ set. Fittingly, they each have the same number of cards and that seems to indicate these are two four-card sets. If designed by the same artist, it would make sense that they would each have the same number of cards.