First Christmas card sold at auction
Published December 4th, 2005
A 162-year-old Christmas card — one of the first ever printed — sold at auction Saturday for $16,000.
The hand-colored card, which shows a family celebrating around a table, is one of about 10 surviving from an original batch of 1,000 printed in 1843, auctioneer Henry Aldridge said.
The cards were commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, a Londoner who is generally recognized as the inventor of the commercial Christmas card.
The card was bought at the auction in the town of Devizes in southern England by Jakki Brown, editor and co-owner of “Progressive Greetings” magazine and general secretary of the Greeting Card Association.
Aldridge said he was “pleased with the price and that the card is staying in this country within the greetings card industry.”
The card was originally sent to a Miss Mary Tripsack, a close friend of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the wife of the poet Robert Browning.
