Regarding the 1896 Page Fence trade card, that team was probably created with the primary purpose of promoting the Page Fence company (or the company went to the already established team and asked them to promote their product) and thus a card promoting the players would make sense. Throughout the true Negro League era, all of the major teams operated independently with no one representing a company for promotional purposes. Their sole purpose was to excel on the baseball field so I think that was an anomaly and unlikely to have been repeated again.
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