Vintage Advertising Calendars

When looking at these practical objects as a works of art, something merely used to keep track of 365 days in a year suddenly takes on a different look. Some of the most highly sought after and valuable calendars offer some sort of advertising slogan.

Advertising Calendars have been around since the early 1900s. Major corporations such as Coca Cola have been using calendars with advertising slogans to help sell their products for a very long time. A bright blue 1946 Coca Cola calendar with large yellow numbers at the top and the image of the Sprite Boy head has a value of $700.00. An earlier Coca Cola calendar dated 1926 with the image of a pretty girl tennis player and holding a glass of Coke has a value of over $1000.00. A host of other advertising calendars exist as well. No matter what they advertised, most of these popular calendars were given away.

Most vintage calendars sell today for $5.00 to $25.00. Older calendars do bring higher prices because they didn’t survive in large quantities. Most paper collectibles such as Ink blotters, matchbooks, postcards, brochures and calendars were originally made to be discarded after use.

You can use vintage calendars to decorate the walls of your home or apartment house. Most of the older calendars are colorful lithographed prints suitable for framing. Western scenes can be found featuring Native American Indians from the 1920s and 1930s. Other lithographed calendar prints that can be found are of Liberty calendars, trains, buildings (from your home town), producers of beer, wine and spirits, flowers, worlds fairs etc. A host of other advertising calendars exist and most of these beautiful old prints can be removed from the calendar, matted and framed.

In addition calendars have been distributed by every kind of business, from giant insurance companies to neighborhood grocery stores. Calendars given away by C. I. Hood Company of Lowell, MA advertising their Sarsaparilla are very popular. Hood printed six million of these calendars between 1981 and 1920. The 1897 Hood calendar came with coupons, one for each month, which could be redeemed for booklets, games, puzzles and other items. A second calendar in 1898 gave away premiums that were worth 12 million dollars.