Jim Tobin card or photo id
 

This Tobin card is just over 3 x 5 and has a blank back. Is this a card or a photo? Maybe a Conlon photo? A repro Conlon photo?

It came in a mixed bag lot with all kinds of stuff like what looks to be a 1936 Goudey type 3 Simmons and 2, 3x5 Kodak postcards, one that looks like a repro 1909 Boston Sunday Herald Supplement Hooper and the other is a pcl Oakland.



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I think you nailed it and the Tobin does look like a photo from the scan. I have a bunch of stuff that is sort of a photo but could be a card.

http://luckeycards.com/po1930spicturesruthgehrigx2.jpg

http://luckeycards.com/phunc1935uncatstars.JPG

Thanks for posting those. I'm thinking what I have is a later generation Conlon photo.


Here is a card that uses a photo that looks like it came from the same shoot...

www.ebay.com/itm/290742256821

Interesting to note that Jim Tobin is the only major league pitcher to hit 3 home runs in one game in the 20th century. Guy Hecker hit 3 home runs in one game in the 1880's.

It's not uncommon to find old "snapshot-type" photos that were re-shot from earlier photos or print sources, or occasionally reproduced from the original negative. Many of these fall into the "card-sized" range, and quality of the image can vary greatly depending on the quality of the original image, the skill of the photographer reproducing it, and how many generations removed it is from the original negative. I've seen some well-known Conlon images reproduced this way that were so washed out that you could barely make out the subject. Your Tobin looks very clear, and may have been produced from the original negative, or at worst be a 2nd Generation photo.

As for whether it's a "card" or a "photo," I'm not sure it has to be one or the other. Plenty of "card" issues were produced using actual photographs. Maybe the difference is whether they were produced as part of a series, or produced in greater quantities?

I believe your Tobin photo is a Geo. Burke repro or Burke/Brace, not Conlon.

I know in the circa 1950s, photographer Jim Rowe sold blank backed about 3x5 photos in catalogs. Probably for collecting and for TTM autograph getting. They included contemporary players and reproductions of old time players back the the 19th century. The Boston Herald repro resemble's those photos. As they were sold commercially for collectors' purposes and are about card size, some might say they are borderline baseball cards . . . I had a bunch of the photos with Rowe's typed original receipt.

Sorry, I completely blanked on the dimensions you gave. I had something smaller in my mind, but if yours are 3-1/2"x5-1/2", they are exactly as Todd and David said. The Tobin in particular is definitely a George Burke photo, most likely printed from the original negative, but at a much later period than when it was taken. As David said, Jim Rowe had a great many of George Burke's negatives that he obtained from Burke's assistant/apprentice George Brace, who took on Burke's photo archives when his health was failing in the late 1940's. Both Rowe and Brace produced copius prints from Burke's negatives. From the 50's to I'm guessing the late 70's or early 80's, they had the same standard Kodak real photo postcard back, with more recent ones having the blank back like your Tobin due to the Kodak back stock being more difficult to obtain (per Mary, Brace's daughter). Based on that, I would say the blank-backed Tobin is a "real photo postcard" (minus the printed postcard markings) produced somewhere from the 1980's on. I don't recognize the handwriting as Rowe's, Brace's, or Mary's, though I belive Mary at least has had help from other family members in recent years (she just recently sold or transferred the archives to John Rogers' outfit, judging by the change in contact info on the bracephoto website and large number of Burke negatives popping up in Rogers' usual outlets in the last few months).

Edited to add: Good luck in putting together a "set" of Rowe or Brace postcards, as either would number into the many thousands. Team sets from a given year would be much more realistic, and that is how many collectors bought them. Both men used images from other sources as well, particularly for earlier (pre-1930's) photos, and quality varies widely on those. Brace developed some skill under Burke as a photographer, and continued to take his own photos up into the late 1980's, whereas Rowe appears to have been more of an amateur, which often shows in the quality of his prints.

A few other Tobin photos by Burke for your amusement:

1931-39 Pittsburgh Pirates (3-1/2"x5-1/2")
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...1_front816.jpg

1940 Boston Bees (4"x6")
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...3/GB0229_1.jpg

1941-45 Boston Braves (3-1/2"x5-1/2")
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...2_front818.jpg

Thanks
 

Thank y'all for the help.... I went and looked at the rest of the cards that came in the lot and found this John Hiller postcard with "Rowe" written on the back. I did not look at it earlier because I knew it was from around the late 60's early seventies. Hiller is in the Canadian Hall of Fame, so he's got that going for him.

I bought this lot because it had a T227 in it that I needed toward the 25 card set. I was hoping to resell these, but now realize that the Goudey Simmons is the only card besides the T227 worth more than a dollar or so.


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Also, I think I was using the wrong terminology earlier. When I said "later generation", I meant a photo, made from an original negative, many years after it had been taken. The Tobin photo is much clearer than these other marked postcards , a little smaller than 3 1/2 by 5 1/2, and at first I thought I may have had a $20 item, which would have covered my bid.