Cabinet Photo Ghost
 

Here's part of the back of an imperial-size cabinet photo, showing a 'ghost' image. The team photos in the estate lot all belonged to Paddy O'Connor, so the team is almost certainly Pittsburg, Springfield or Kansas City.

The ghost is from a platinum print team photo that had been stacked against it for many years. Even more of a mystery because I did not win the photo that caused the ghost image.

I max'd out the contrast several times in order to get a decent image:

As Scott knows, but others probably don't, Platinum print photos could leave a 'ghost' print when pressed against something else.

Hey Scott. Perhaps that's a team photo of the "Field of Dreams" players... ;)

I didn't see any other photos being offered with the rest of the O'Connor stuff, that matched this one (I flipped the ghost, to show what the ghost-lending photo would have looked like), but it was large and platinum, and probably a 1910-1914 professional team, so would be quite valuable. I want it.

It's really odd that this thread popped up just today as I just bought some cabinet photos (non sports related) in which one has a ghost image of a group of men on the back...I'd never seen that before today.

That is super-cool - clearest platinum-caused image I've seen.

Edited to add: David and I have had quite a few conversations about these, as I'm always shopping around for Edward Curtis platinum prints and we find a few platinum portraits at the antique shops. No one knows why the platinum prints do this, and no other photographic processes do, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the 'lending' photo. All (from what I've seen) platinum prints that come in a folder, cause this effect on the folder page facing them.

A bit better - sort of like the Shroud of Turin:

Hear you go - I was able to clean it up with my super-CSI image enhancement software:

ENHANCE!

Great detective work.

Mark - that's amazing! I had no hopes that anyone would actually find the real photo. It makes sense, as the photo that it was apparently stacked against had many of the same players pictured in B&L's 1905 Springfield postcard.

Guy third from left on top row looks like Steamer Flanagan.

http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/...r/Flanigan.png

Yes - that's Steamer (unless he had a twin). What's funny is that BR lists James J. Flanagan with the 1905 Springfield team (Steamer was James Paul Flanagan). However, Steamer's bio in "Notre Dame Baseball Greats" says he did play for Springfield for two years.