AMAZING SET OF CDV PHOTOS from 1800s - 1900s. Carte de visite - The carte de visite - abbr. CdV - was a format of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero. Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards, in an early form of social media, were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The popularity of the format and its rapid uptake worldwide were due to their relative cheapness, which made portrait photographs accessible to a broader demographic, and prior to the advent of mechanical reproduction of photographs, led to the publication and collection of portraits of prominent persons. It was the success of the carte de visite that led to photography's institutionalisation. The carte de visite was usually an albumen print from a collodion negative on thin paper glued onto a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 mm (2.125 in) × 89 mm (3.5 in) mounted on a card sized 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in). The reverse was generally printed with the logo of the photographer or the photography studio from which it came, as protection of copyright, as advertising, and sometimes carried instructions for effective posing. These are various photos from 1800s to 1900s. Some sell for up to $20 each.

VG