First printed Christmas card

The first mass-produced Christmas card was printed and on sale in the UK in 1843. The lithographed card depicts a Christmas dinner with three generations of a family enjoying a Christmas party, with the side panels showing charitable scenes with people clothing and feeding the poor. There are only 12 of the original 1,000 cards still in existence, and one, sent by Bath-born businessman Sir Arthur Cole to his mother in 1843, was sold for £20,000 ($28,000) at auction in 2001, becoming the most valuable Christmas card ever. The cards were originally sold at a shilling each, an average man's weekly wage. As a result, they were only bought by the wealthier classes.