how to tell a real cdv/cabinet
 

i want to buy a 19th century cdv or a cabinet photo of a player or team but i'm not sure what to look for when buying one and dont want to get ripped off with a good reprint/fake. any help would be great thanks

They have a cardboard backing with a very thin photographic print pasted to the front. Most fakes will be computer prints of the photographic print and will be made up of a multi color dot pattern under strong magnification. Real photos have no dot pattern. Also modern photographic prints aren't as thin as from the 1800s. Most forgeries and reprints don't use real photographic prints, so the dot pattern test will identify most. Other than those 'Goodwin' reprints you hear about, I'm not aware of any reprints of baseball cdvs or cabinets that you real photographic images.

Later 1800s cdvs and cabinet backings (aka mount, the cardboard part) were factory cut like a baseball card-- so professionally cut borders not homemade.

Many 1800s photographic prints will have 'silvering' which is sort of a silver patina that gets brighter and darker as you change the angle of the image the light. This is a strong sign of old age.

A lot of 'fakes' are genuine cabinet cards or cdvs that are misidentified or misdated. Say a 1910s cabinet that is called 1860s, or a gymnast a baseball player. Knowing the different mount styles, uniforms etc helps here. I'd say misrepresentation like this of genuine photos is the most common area of fakes, not homemade counterfeits. Also a lot of homemade fakes-- ala a computer print pasted to a real cabinet mount-- are identified because the image and the mount are from different eras-- a photo of Ty Cobb in Tigers uniform on a 1890s mount.

below is an extensive photograph identification guide that includes sections of cdvs and cabinets. Includes lots of pictures. Shows how to date them by the style and color of the mounts, etc. This pdf guide was made for an online course so has so class stuff intermingled that you can ignore.

pdf photo guide

thanks alot for the help

Cabinet cards and cdvs are easier to identify as genuine for the average collector than baseball cards. At least I think so.

Thanks David.........
 

Thanks for the great photography reference David!! Very much appreciated...........a lot of good-to-know information.