Thoughts on this 19th century oddball piece

[aquarius31]

Wow Matt, I am very impressed!! I was thinking that it would be difficult to even identify 1-2 players maximum so I really appreciate your help! You may be on to something with the Baltimore theme especially given that the each of the identified players appear to have played for the Orioles at some point. And Jeff, appreciate your thoughts here as well since McGraw started his career with the Orioles although the scan that I provided is not good.

I'll take a few updated pictures without glass once I bring to the frame shop and will share any new information here. Thank you!

[Matthew H]

No sweat George. I was interested in that piece when I saw it in Hunts and I'm glad you posted more detailed pics here.

You should pick up a copy of the OJ book if you like 19th century items and don't have one. There's over 2500 photos of these players from the era, and since most of those photos are Goodwin and Co, it wasn't hard to pick out most of the players. The bottom left is Matt Killroy, bottom right is William Whitaker. The player in the middle row far left is another pose of Chris Fulmer, next to him is Joseph Tucker.

It's definitely Baltimore.

[aquarius31]

Honestly, thank you very much Matt!!! I went back through your player ids and initially was confused because I only had 2 rows of pictures but then realized that your screen settings may be different. I started with Fulmer and Powell and then went clockwise. I think all the players have been identified now (the guy crouching is Sam Trott) with the exception of the guy in the middle and #2. The smaller external boxes are not something I'm going to look at right now since they are extremely faded with most images being unrecognizable.

At some point, I may have a photographer take several high resolution photos of the display and retouch it to show how it would have looked prior to all the wear and tear. Then I can have a double-sided frame to showcase it.

1) Chris Fulmer and Abner Powell
2) ???
3) John Farrell
4) Chris Fulmer
5) Joseph Tucker
6) Sam Trott
7) Phenomenal Smith
8) Oyster Burns
9) Joe Sommers
10) Matt Kilroy
11) Tom Quinn
12) William Whitaker

[maniac_73]

Cant identify anything just wanted to mention that its a very cool piece!

[aquarius31]

Thanks to Matt H., I've been able to identify all the players in the inner circle and from the id's I've been able to digitally recreate this particular piece. My photoshop skills are poor and I have no idea how to manually crop around the players (vs standard square crop). I plan to scale up the N172's to the size of the N173's, print out high resolution images of each of them and then cut them out and put them on a poster board which I will artificially age somehow. Should be a fun side project.

0) ??? (center image unknown origin)
1) Chris Fulmer and Abner Powell
2) Bert Cunningham (Old Judge)
3) John Farrell (Old Judge)
4) Chris Fulmer (Old Judge)
5) Joseph Tucker (Old Judge)
6) Sam Trott (Old Judge - unique pose from original)
7) Phenomenal Smith (Old Judge)
8) Oyster Burns (Old Judge)
9) Joe Sommers (Old Judge)
10) Matt Kilroy (Old Judge)
11) Tom Quinn (Old Judge)
12) Pat Whitaker (Old Judge)

Sadly, I have learned that the piece itself cannot be restored other than cleaning up the glue residue and touching up the center image. There is nothing that can be done for the outside images and many of them are unrecognizable. I have searched through the internet at length and have not been able to find the original card source for the outside square portraits or the center image. I don't believe that the outside portraits are N172's but if anyone recognizes something in the scans, please let me know! I assume that they are Baltimore players as well (based on 'B' on some jerseys) and suspect that at least one of them is the manager, Billy Barnie although it's not a perfect match to his N172 pose.