OJ Printing Plate?

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Posted By: Nick

Hello,
I buy and sell baseball related items locally and occasionally I get a call for something other than a box full of 90' Topps...

A gentleman who owns a local art studio called and said he had "what appears to be a printing plate of some kind, made out of metal attached to wood. The plate has the following on it: the players name(Mike Kelly), $10,000 and the words old judge". He said the plate looks very old. He said the metal looked to be brass, but he was not sure.

As most of us know that is a brief description of an OJ $10,000 Mike King Kelly card(N173 I would guess.)

My question is: Does a printing plate for this card
exist? And if it does how can one properly ID a genuine example. And lastly what is it worth?

Thanks for the help.

Nick

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Posted By: Julie

Old Judge and N173s were albumen prints made from glass plates, but I'm probably wrong. I'm going to look in Lipset...

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Posted By: Nick

According to the picture in Lipsets book, the description is more fitting of Kellys N173 card. I do not think the N172 has the "$10,000" part on it.

Nick

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Posted By: Nick

to N172. I need one more cup of coffee!

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Posted By: Julie

There's undoubtedly a N173 with the same picture.

Lew Lipset doesn't say word one about "albumen" or "silver nitrate," and David Rudd, though he may think he makes everything clear as glass (HA!), doesn't. My INMPRESSION from reading Rudd is that albumen prints--all Old judges, n173's and N167s, are albumen prints and WERE NOT MADE FROM METAL NEGATIVES.

Anyone with better information, please contribute.

It really makes me mad that Lipset and Rudd, experts in 19th century photography (esp. Rudd), don't mske this clear.
Rudd does say that tintypes, and a few others earlier than Old Judge) ARE made on metal--in fact, ARE metal.

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Posted By: Hankron

Julie is correct. The Old Judges are photographs, and the player images were made from glass negatives not a printing plate. So, this wouldn't be an original Old Judge printing plate.

However, a printing plate like yours, with the metal coating on an 'embossed' piece of wood is an old fashioned form of printing. I have no clue what the plate was used to print (poster? newspaper? book? piece of art? I'm sure the '$10,000 Kelly' was used many times), but it is probably many decades old. This could mean it's from 1950, not 1887, but it is an interesting piece of memorabilia. If you could trace down what it was used to print, that would likely at least double its value.

This type of printing (called 'releif', as the printing suface is in relief) was most commonly used in publishing (books, magazines, newspapers), but this also includes posters and even trading cards issued by book/magazine/newspaper publishers.

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Posted By: Hankron

This is just speculation, but if the design appears to carved by hand, it would be possible you have an original woodcut used to make a woodcut picture in a 19th century newspaper, book or guide.

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Posted By: Hankron

To address your other question, I don't know what it would be worth. If it's from the 1950s, probably under $100. A lot will depend on it's size, attractiveness (display value) and if you can identify what it was used to print. If it's an original 19th woodcut used to print a Spalding Guide or Harper's Woodcut, then you would have something special.

In general, printing plates are considered an oddity and, unless you have something really special and attractive, will not gather big time bidding.

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Posted By: Andy Baran

N167's are not photographic like N172's and N173's. I could be wrong, but I believe that they are essentially the same as woodcuts. Also, there is no Kelly in the N167 set. It was just NY Giants.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Julie and David are right---N173's were made from glass plate negatives; N172's were made by rephotographing 6x4 sheets of N173-size photographs. The words "10,000 Kelly" were scratched into the glass plate negative used to make the photos, they were never printed on the cards. Other words seen on Old Judge cards (other than what was scratched into the glass plate negatives) were attached to the N173-size photos before they were rephotographed to make the N172's. For example, the player's name, position and team on an N172 was just a strip of paper with this info on it pinned or similarily attached below the N173-size photo. If you look at some N172's under a loop you can see the marks where the wording was attached. A photo and some pieces of paper with wording, when rephotographed, became a card.