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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

Mammoth plates vary in size. The smallest would be the next size up from the largest imperial cabinet size (typically around 8" x 10"). So if a photo say is 9" x 12", I would call it too big to be an imperial cabinet and would therefore characterize it as a mammoth plate. I have seen 19th century mammoth plates as large as around 19" x 22". Remember one thing. For much (all?) of the 19th century photographers did not have the ability to enlarge or reduce prints from negatives. The 19" x 22" mammoth plate I have (of the 1889 Pittsburgh team) was printed from a negative that size! If someone wanted to make a baseball card from that image, he would have to reshoot it (i.e., take a photograph of the photograph) onto a smaller negative to generate the smaller positive image.

I have in my collection an imperial cabinet of the Kalamazoo Bats Boston team. Its resolution/clarity exceeds that of the cabinet I have of the same team. How can this be? The imperial cabinet was likely the proof used to make (by reshooting that image onto a smaller negative) the cabinet (and the regular size baseball card).