minor BF2 pennant puzzler
 

From the too much time on my hands department, I am confident this will mean little or less to anyone but a few collectors, but for years I have been puzzled by the Cobb photo used for his 1916 BF2 pennant. I always believed that the photos used for those pennants came from Mendelsohns' m101-4 set, and were both trimmed and skinned; alternatively, that they were simply printed on thinner stock and then trimmed (not skinned). All of the photos appear to match up with m101-4, including the rare Stanage portrait. However, Cobb is different. It's the correct photo, and he's trimmed at the bottom, but how in the heck did he get MORE sky; i.e. a larger background then what is on the card? Also, there is more bat (longer) showing on the “mini” than on the card. Compare (neither is mine).
http://www.goodwinandco.com/ItemImag...7-76a_med.jpeghttps://www.robertedwardauctions.com...eimer-cobb.jpg
It seems that the producer of the set had the correct photo but chose to crop it very differently (and poorly IMO), as they literally chopped him off at the knees just to include inordinate sky. But the point is whoever did this obviously did not use a finished card as a starting point, but rather a photo. This may help date the pennants as the earliest iteration of m101-4. We already know that the pennants include the rare Stanage portrait pose, which was pulled early in production. It is possible that Cobb’s consent to be included in the Mendelsohn set (he was not in m101-5) came just as the BF2s were ready to go to print, and they cropped the photo in a rushed manner, only to revisit and change it before the cards were printed. Anyway, it’s just something that’s always been a head scratcher to me, so I thought maybe someone else familiar with the set (or not) has any opinions on what happened.