Incredible Baseball Tintype Auction Yesterday

[benjulmag]

For purposes of full disclosure, I am the person who purchased the Anson tintype.

In regard to how one knows it is Anson, I too asked the same questions. I did not take into account at all that Ken Burns identified it as such, as I have no information how he came to that determination.

The basis for my ID is the extraordinary resemblance of the person identified as Anson in the tintype compared to two closely-dated images of him – the c. 1868 Marshalltown team shot and the 1874 Studdards & Fennmore cabinet. Yes, I am aware how easy it is for different people to resemble each other, but I simply could not get over the resemblances in this instance. Anson’s hair and the way he parts it is distinct, and they match very well. His eyes are a distinct blue, which when one has the tintype in hand show perfectly. In sum, I (and all others I showed it too, most of whom never heard of Anson) thought the images matched. Other corroborating aspects are his central position in the photo (middle of the front row), exactly where one would expect to see the team’s most important player, and the strong familial resemblance of the person in the middle of the back row to Anson, something I regarded as noteworthy as Anson's brother was on the team.

As to whether other players match up to players in the c. 1868 Marshalltown, that is a difficult comparison to make because in that image the other players are not wearing caps, which they are in the tintype (though Anson is not, thankfully). Also, because Anson played on Marshalltown for several years, the images could be from different years when the team composition could have changed.

At the end of the day each of us makes collecting decisions based on his/her subjective comfort level, and with this image I felt really good it was Anson.

To be totally transparent, SABR’s pictorial committee newsletter several years ago concluded the image does not depict Anson, something I was well aware of when I reached the opposite conclusion. The flaw with the newsletter’s analysis is that it does not take into account the tintype is a reverse image, so all the comparisons it makes to the corresponding features on the comparison images were based on the opposite-side’s feature. The human face is not symmetrical, thereby IMO rendering the analysis flawed. I also strongly believe that even if done properly, between the fact that certain facial features change over time (e.g., ears) coupled with the difficulty in taking exact measurements due to resolution and distortion effects, the comparison is simply not precise enough to rule out Anson.