Anyone aware of method of manufacture of orig T206s, Obaks, and E cards?

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Posted By: Brueso

I'm sticking my neck out here about my ignorance of the manufacture of T206, caramel cards and Obaks- they seem to basically be illustrations or paintings sometimes based on existing photos (Scott has some on his website). But I wondered if they were made from original paintings or illustrations, has anyone ever heard of anyone owning these things?

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Posted By: David

The player images on T206s and similar appearing E-cards were reproductions of real photographs that were colored either directly on the photograph before reproduction or otherwise colored during the production/printing process. Both due to the style in which they were colored and the fact that the lithography used back then was rather primitive, the cards ended up often looking more like paintings than photographs.

I'm not aware of the existance of any of the actual photographs used. I have heard a few times that Marshall Fogel owns the original Honus Wagner photograph, but I'm not sure if that means he owns the actual Wagner photo used to make the card or an additional copy. The images were often used/distrubuted for other projects and even public distribution, so a collector can get one of these photographs, but not neccesarily the one that was actually used to make the card.

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Posted By: Brueso

It's fascinating to me that someone back in the early 1900s would choose to paint in a yellow or completely orange sky. Some of the cards look almost psychedelic because of some of the colors used- much less conventional as far as colors used then sets in the almost 100 years since!

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Posted By: runscott

My understanding is that the guy who painted the Pattee horizontal went on to design tourist post-cards for the state of Florida.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

many of the t-cards, specifically t204 & many t206's along with many e-cards, such as e107 & e103 were taken from carl horners photography work, as are W600's and many other early baseball issues, they are in some cases the original photo or "colorized version's" these usually having team names drawn in such as on the t206's, as to the obaks i am not sure of the original photographer, but i am fairly sure it was the same scenario, a photographer took the pictures and the cards were "colorized from them.

these original horner cabinet photos on horner mounts are sometimes found on ebay or in the major auctions and usually command spirited bidding.

later on in the 1920's and 1930's george burke took the majority of photos that were used on goudeys and playball cards, at one time i owned almost 400 original george burke photos from his studio, which included 2 of the 33 goudey ruth shots and 39 playball dimaggio shots, among many others. the goudeys were they cropped and colorized, the playballs being used as they were.


scott

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Posted By: Vaughn Brossart

As a collector of Goudeys, Diamond Stars, and Play Balls, I thought it would be informative to put together a more detailed presentation regarding their production and "provenance" than what I've been able to find "out there". Locating the original photographic image for as many of the cards as possible seemed like a good place to begin, but when I tried to find the burke pictures referenced by scott, even Google hasn't been much help! Can anyone give me a clue? They could be prints, jpegs, pictures in books...

Thanks for any assistance.


Vaughn Brossart
Portland, OR

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Posted By: Dan Mathewson

...the Matty horizontals (as on my Nadja, Dockman's, etc) have those multi-colored sky patterns that really are quite bizarre...but, quite honestly, they look pretty damm cool. I don't know who thought up that scheme, but I like it on those cards. I have a few that are amazingly bright and vibrant. (I'm starting to sound like Wine Spectator...LOL)

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Posted By: David

Hello,

The answer is, keep looking. They have to be out there somewhere.

The T206, T205, etc images are relatively easy to find, as they were used and reused countless times on on other cards, newspaper pictures, etc etc. On the other hand, the Goudey images were not reused and are much harder to find.

It was said by Scott B. that George Burke made many or most of the Goudey images. I beleive this, because nearly all of his photographs have the same Goudey pose. Burke's original photos are plentiful compared to contemporaries like Charles Conlon, so it would seem that the Goudey poses could be found.

A number of the original paintings exist that were used to make the Diamond Stars cards and the closely related National Chicle football cards. Presumably these paintings were based on photographs. These artworks make up nearly all of the original paintings or similar artworks used to make Pre-WWII cards (I can think of two other original artworks known to exist). Rob Lifson, at MastroNet, owned most to all of them. I've never met Rob in person, but talked to him on the phone specifically about these and related paintings. He was very nice and I was appreceative of his knowledge and help.

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Posted By: David

<< ...nearly all of his (Burke's) photographs have the same Goudey pose >>

To clarify myself, I meant that nearly all of Burke's photographs have a Goudey-style pose . I didn't mean that every Burke image was literaly an image used for the Goudeys.

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Posted By: Bruce Moreland

When I am looking for type cards, several times I've ended up picking cards because of their sky background.

Here are two more sky cards that I often post links to for some reason or another:




bruce

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Posted By: runscott

I got lucky and found the photo used to make the e95 Wagner. Feeling that I had to use it for something, I've decided to create a new web-page.

Since I'm not nearly as familiar with e-cards as t-cards, I might post some photos on the web and ask y'all to tell me what e-cards might have been created from them.

I'm glad Dan brought this thread "back to life". It's been pointed out to me that some of the t206's might actually just be line drawings that aren't based on a photographic image at all - Elmer Flick was the example given. As David mentioned, some were actually created from colored b&w photos - great examples are most of the portraits: Weimer, Cy Young, Art Devlin are a few of the best.

I would love to see the original photo used for the t206 Speaker - same one was used for the T3 and one of his red-and-blue strip cards (w515 I think). Another one that I can't locate is the Mathewson portrait (c'mon Dan, get to work!)