Are Old Judge Proofs a Dead Horse ???

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Posted By: Josh Evans

Very interesting note from this year’s National. For this first time I had a chance to see one of these Old Judge Proofs that everyone has been talking about for the last year or so. It is remarkable to me that these so-called experts can say these have any age at all. Those babies (yes I say babies – because they are newborn) are just that: brand new. The images themselves are poor, the paper they are printed on is modern, the emulsions are modern, and most importantly it should be obvious to anyone with any knowledge of old photography that a fresh paper image has been glued to an old photographic mount.

It was obvious to myself that the photo was put on the mount recently. The exposed edges of the paper are almost white for god’s sake. When two pieces have been glued together for 100 years (or even 50, or 25) a relationship develops between the two. This is the same look that develops when ink has been on paper for a long period of time; it is called “knitting.”) It is a common device to detect autograph forgeries.

Those that have said these are fake, are correct and I applaud them. Those that have said that they have “some age” are the most dangerous of all. Has a Dennis Goldstein or a Mark Rucker chimed in on this? They have opinions in this area that I respect.

Several years back I was offered several glass photographic plates of common Old Judge cabinet cards (life sized). I would not be surprised if these “proofs” were made from those plates. This is only a guess and not a necessity as they could be made from the cards although the imagery would suffer.