Early Honus Wagner Photos
 

Does anyone have early Wagner photos to share? Pre-baseball photos, especially those of Honus in his teens would be great. Type 1 or cabinet photos would be interesting to see.

Thanks.

Ethan

One of the earliest Wagners that you will find, an 1899 M101-1.............

And he still looks old in this picture..lol...I bet it was hard for him to get girls when he was young because everyone probably thought he was 30yrs older than he looked

I thought that this cabinet photo looked an awful lot like young Honus.

Another look...

I don't really think so........

I had to look closely.....Take a close look at the ears, mouth and eyes in the cabinet and compare to his E 103 card. If it is him, obviously quite a bit younger.

1895....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ub%2C_1895.jpg

Nothing matches - not even close.

I think that is a stretch, but thanks for your thoughts.

2007 auction of a photo of 10-yr-old Wagner? Tallest in the rightmost photo.

http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/.../2007/915.html


http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/...tem_9075_1.jpg

No Ethan, it's not a stretch. What you have asserted is ludicrous.

First, the left ear (viewer's right) shape is very different, and your guy has a very detached earlobe while Wagner does not - that alone tells us that these two are not the same person.

Your guy has a nice turned up nose while Wagner has a huge down-turned beak.

Your guy has a relatively pointy chin, Wagner's is more broad and flat

The lip/philtrum shape is very different.

There is nothing with respect to the presumed time span between these two images that would explain any of this. These features are all well-formed by the time one is a teenager. Be careful what you buy. :)

Usually I stay out of these threads, and just enjoy the banter. But this is perhaps one of the most severe cases of "wishful thinking" ever to hit the Forum.

Just the nose differences alone close this case. You simply cannot "will it" to be Wagner, and ignore the facts.

Just remember, some of us enjoy the banter. Not something that I bought...just flipping through a box of old tip types / cabinet cards and saw it.

Some of us still enjoy the hunt and getting our hands dirty in search of baseball's finest treasures. While the Internet is fun, you cannot buy what has yet to found on it. I've got plenty of graded and authenticated stuff. It is what hasn't been seen that keeps me interested.

Cheers.

E

John,

That shot of Wagner with the three other boys is ridiculous. At ten, he looked twenty. Love.

Graig

Wagner as a kid
 

The photo of Honus with the other kids is part of a larger school photo, showing about 30 children total. It could have been taken outside the First Ward Public School in Carnegie, though I'm not certain. In the full version of the photo, Honus' brother Al is standing behind him and to the viewer's right. . . . I was lucky enough a few years ago to purchase an original copy of this photo, which I'm 99 percent sure was Wagner's. The image appeared in a month-long biographical series on Wagner that ran in a Pittsburgh newspaper a couple of years after he retired. The series included numerous photos that could only have come from the Wagner family. Faint crop marks on the original photo match up with the image published in the paper, so I'm reasonably sure my copy was once Honus'. It's among my favorite Honus pieces.

The picture isn't showing up.