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Posted By: hankron

The Mayo and the Just So issues were the first standard baseball cards that were mechanical prints (ink and printing plate/press) and had photo-realistic images. Particularly deceptive with the Mayos, as they were designed to look like photo cards ... The earlier printing press cards, like the Allen & Ginters and the Buchner Gold Coins, resemble little paintings or sketches.

While photo realistic printed images on cards and magazines and postcards is taken for granted by us and even by grandparents years ago, for many years it was not practically possible to make a mechanical print with a photo realistic image. The technology hadn't been invented. If you look in a Civil War era newspaper, you will see that all the newpaper pictures look like sketches. It wasn't until the early 1880s, that a few newspapers, using a relatively new printing process, had photo-realistic pictures. I beleive the New York Times didn't have such images until the 1900s.