[thecatspajamas]

Okay, so after much speculation (including my own), here's the inside scoop from Henry:

These photos are simply 1950's restrikes off of Associated Press original negatives. AP and Wide World Photos were 1 and the same company by then (operated as separate arms, but were the same company, as AP had purchased WWP from The New York Times in 1941). The captions look old, but are consistent with what they used in the 1950's. They are backdated, as the clerk simply typed the info that was on the original negative's sleeve onto a then-new caption slip, including date of the original shot (NOT the issuing date), and affixed that to the back of the photo. They are Type II 1950's-60's restrikes, and the ones that are post-1955 will fluoresce under a black light.

The biggest kicker for me ["me" being Lance] is that the big, fat, red SPORT stamps on the backs were placed there later, when the archives were sold, to identify the photos as once being the property of Sport, NOT something applied earlier to indicate Sport had issued the photo. This is not speculation, and he has seen the actual SPORT stamp used.

In summary, though there is clearly a lot of confusion out there regarding these, they are definitely Type II restrikes produced years later, and are worth a fraction of what their Type I counterparts would be (if you could find a Type I counterpart for a given image, that is, though there are surely instances where no Type I's are known and the Type II is all that remains today, as seems to be the case with the Waners photo that started this whole discussion).

I personally doubt that most auction houses representing them as Original/Type I's are doing so maliciously, but would have to take that on a case-by-case basis, knowing that not everyone comes to the auction block armed with the same information.