Around the turn of the century, one of the brothers who ran the Verkade company was visiting Germany where he saw the Trade Cards issued by companies in that country. He was impressed by the quality of the cards he found there and saw the potential benefits to be gained by issuing such cards in Holland. He therefore negotiated the rights to publish 3 albums of cards under the Verkade name.

These early cards were similar in format to many German issues of that era and contained a mixture of different series on themes as diverse as Natural History, the Military and Fairy Stories. Whilst the backs of the cards were changed to encorporate a Verkade design, the original illustrations were used for the card fronts. As a result, the albums have a distinct German flavour - something which is most noticeable in the Military series which feature the German Army. The company restricted the print run of the first album to just over 10,000 copies but by album 3 this had risen to 17,000 copies.

Sprookjes I	Sprookjes II	Sprookjes III

The Card Mine