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petecldNeither of the E107 cards is an illustration.
The Cross card has image quality of most E107s and appears as if it was produced directly from a photo negative.
Brian P. has the right idea. Newspapers often mask out (remove) the backgrounds around player images, be it a portrait or an action pose, to allow the player to stand out better if they feel the background takes away from the players image or for effect when used on the final printed page. The Thomas card has that look to it. I think they used a photo that was previously touched up by a newspaper and since they were using a photo as opposewd to a negative they would need to create a print negative for the printing process of the cards and that process resulted in the photo quality of the Thomas card since it is essentially a 2nd generation image.