Has anyone ever seen one of these?
 

I recently bought an old house that was full of things. Tuck away in a book was this. It's a negative but is it a negative of his baseball card or what?

Looks like a negative of a printed photo. Example: Somebody took a picture of an already existing Newspaper or magazine photo of Galan, and put a nameplate in front of it, and snapped a picture.

Could possibly have been a mock-up for use in another newspaper or publication of the time period. Could have been done for personal reasons.

It is not a reverse negative in the photo either, you can tell from the number on the back.

There is that other printing process that does not use reverse negatives for printing, but I forget what the term is.

Sun photo, I think. Self-developing with a kit that has photo paper. you hold it against the paper in the sun and it makes a photo.

Probably this ^....they were made in about 1931...(from my past collection)