Seascape Valentine Card 1900

Valentine card 1862

St Valentine's Day card, embossed and printed in colour, with silk panel and printed message, "My Dearest Miss, I send thee a kiss", addressed to Miss Jenny Lane (or Lowe, or Love) of Crostwight Hall, Smallburgh, Norfolk. This card is of high antique value. Send this Valentine card of 1862 for Valentines Day. It is worth a hundred valentine greeting cards you can buy now.

Esther Howland Valentine Card

The above image shows a Valentine card produced by Esther Howland in 1850 AD that has the message, "Weddings now are all the go, will you marry me or no". This is a public domain image and you are free to use the above classic beauty of a card by downloading or saving the image to your hard disk.

As Leigh Eric Schmidt, a writer in Graham's American Monthly, observed in 1849 that Saint Valentine's Day had become a national holiday in the United States. The first mass-produced Valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold in the United States, shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts. Esther Howland took her inspiration for producing the cards from an English Valentine card she had received. The practice of sending Valentine's cards had existed in England before it became popular in North America. Since 2001, the U.S. Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary."