Charles Conlon photos with Underwood & Underwood stamp

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Originally Posted by Hankphenom

That would make them Type III, contemporary but not from the original negative. I would guess you're right about that, but its also possible that U&U bought the original negatives and scratched the serial numbers in them, which would make those prints Type I. Probably not though, as they look to have slightly diminished resolution. More likely they made a negative from their Type I original, then scratched the number in that to make prints from. Type IIIs are much more collectible than IIs, in my experience, and Henry agreed that with hindsight he would have switched II and III to better reflect the vintage characteristic and more desirability as collectibles of the IIIs.

Repsher offered up a positive image of the original Conlon negative (courtesy of John Rogers' archive) to compare to the photo he purchased. Rogers' original neg was used to create the positive image that was posted for comparison to Repsher's piece. So the U & U serial number or id data is not on the original neg. Conlon distributed his photos, not his negatives. If a news service received an original Conlon photo and wanted to add their own serial number onto the original...then they would have to create their own neg by taking a photo of the original photo. This would embed their written data onto their newly created copy neg. If you were to come across a Conlon image with the info actually written on the front and not embedded into the image, then you may have an original Conlon photo created from the original neg...and it would most likely have Conlon's stamp and/or writing on the back.

So, what you have here are photos created from a copy neg. Nice, crisp images, but not original Conlons.

By the way, good eye friend!