An advertising blotter is a small sheet of absorbent paper, printed with advertisement and created as a giveaway for promoting the business. The collection consists of advertising blotters from a variety of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware businesses including a tailor, insurance companies, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company, stationery stores, and food suppliers.

Coffee production and consumption boomed in America during the nineteenth century. Coffee producers and distributers advertised their brands on trade cards, small advertising cards often produced via the color printing method chromolithography. This small collection consists of trade cards related to coffee, mostly localized to Ohio, including cards from twenty-two coffee companies.

A needlebook is a small pocket-sized case used for keeping sewing needles in; it is made of fabric or paper and folded to look like a book. The trend of making needlebooks began in the 1800s and rose in popularity through the 1950s. The needlebook would store all the various sizes and types of needles needed for a project. This small collection consists of six packages containing sewing needles, with illustrated covers.

Match cover or a matchbook cover is a thin piece of cardboard that is folded around a set of match sticks. Chemist, John Walker (1781-1859) invented the match stick in 1827. Joshua Pusey (1842-1906?), an inventor and attorney patented matchbook covers in 1892. Within a short time hotels, restaurants, airlines, and all kinds of stores began advertising using matchbook covers. This collection is eight volumes of matchbook covers, each volume contains approximately 330-570 matchbooks. The matchbooks are graphic advertisements for various businesses, services, or products. The industries most represented are hotels, restaurants, clubs, and bars. There are a large amount of matchbooks from banks/insurance companies, automobile companies, airlines, food stores, drug stores, clothing stores, among others.

Patent medicines, also known as proprietary medicines, are non-prescription medicinal remedies that are trademarked and whose ingredients have been granted protection for exclusivity. The term "patent medicine" has become particularly associated with drug compounds manufactured during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In actuality, the patent medicine recipes were not officially patented. Patent medicine promoters pioneered many advertising and sales techniques; this small collection primarily features trade cards and almanacs.