[drc]

I haven't followed the details of this thread or looked closely at the images, but having handled countless 'mass produced' 1860s CDVs of famous people and situations I can say that the image quality can legitimately vary in quality and clarity between CDVs of the same subject. These were often produced as commercial items, not original works of art, and the image quality can vary for a variety of reasons, including aging and time changes to the negative or print, who made them, perhaps the some were made form a copy images, etc. It's possible to find one lighter and/or clearer than another and they were made in the same year. Perhaps they weren't made in the same way or by the same printer (helping to explain the difference), but they can be from the same time period.

With civil war era photo of US generals, presidents and other famous people, some of the images are clearly first generation (images are as sharp and detailed as a modern photo) while others are copy images, copy negatives and even reproductions of engravings and paintings. The latter don't qualify as 'Type I' but do date to Civil War.