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davidcyclebackI don't know about all the 1800s guides, but I had an 1890s Spalding Guide and all the illustrations were woodcuts-- with nice portraits of King Kelly etc.
Woodcut printing was rarely used with baseball cards or posters, but was most commonly used commercially in periodical publishing-- thus woodcuts in books and magazines.
For those who didn't read the other thread, woodcut prints were printed from handcarved blocks of woods. Harper's employed professional craftsmen to carve the blocks of wood, and for especially large ornate designs it could take over a week to create the finished block of wood. This is the similar way famous artists like Albrecht Durer and Picasso made their woodcuts prints. While the Harper's woodcuts were simply magazine pictures, they are original, handmade prints. By the 1900s, modern efficient photographic reproduction/halftone methods were devised and the handmade printing for books, magazines and newspapers was no longer used.
In the fine arts, the Harper's woodcuts would be cataloged as "original" or "handmade" prints, because they were printed directly from handmade printing plates. This is the printing equivalent to an original photograph or original painting.
So the Harper's woodcuts have both pedestrian (magazine pictures surrounded by articles) and genuine fine art qualities. They're sort of a cross between original art and your morning newspaper-- which seems oxymoronic to many modern collectors. The short answer is in the 1800s they didn't the have modern 20th century technology, and all the graphics for magazines and books and posters was done the way it was done in the 1700s and 1400s-- by hand.
Duly note that 1800s Allen & Ginters, Goodwins, trade cards, tobacco posters, labels and albums are also handmade prints. Your Allen & Ginter Jack Glasscock was made in the same handmade way as a Marc Chagall lithograph in a museum. Picasso and Chagall made original posters for advertising purposes and Durer's wife sold his original woodcuts at local fairs, so it's not as if commerce and fine art can't exist together.