Honus Wagner Cabinet Card 1911

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by joeadcock

This thread has taken an interesting turn.

Question for me are multiple brought out via others here, as what I had hoped for.

Scott makes point about trimming down to fit mount. Does anyone know if this what was usually done for form a cabinet? Or at least sometimes? Afterall, how else would you make a cabinet, unless photograph was exactly a particular size to fit all cabinets. Doubt that based on different size cabinets and different studios producing them(at least for later cabinets). Hence, this Cabinet would be just another example of the many that exist.

How many examples are there of one cabinet card such as this? There could be more, from Quebec studio. Or from other studios also.

I haven't seen this kind of back and forth on whether particular example is a true cabinet? The consensus on a true cabinet appears to be not 100%, except that based on definition, this is one, a photo mounted on a board.

Agree, this a different print from one sold by Hunt. So how many type 1's are usually made from original negative? Would suppose, that few dating back 100 years. Therefore, few cabinets of any particular subject, such as this one.

Hope more info comes out.

As a collector, I would be considered less with 'how' a cabinet card was created, and more with 'who' created it.

This isn't from the Quebec studio. Someone took a Bain photo, trimmed it and glued it to a Quebec mount - I can promise you that this was not done at Bain's studio. I have a bunch of Bain photos that I could also trim down and glue to cabinet mounts. They would technically then be cabinet cards, and each would be one-of-a-kind. A 'Bain' cabinet card (if such a thing existed) would be created by someone at Bain's studio creating a print and gluing it to a Bain studio mount. Bain could print and trim as many original photos as he pleased, back in 1909, to create cabinets from...if he chose to create cabinets.

As I said, I think it's a very attractive creation.

[sb1]

I would classify this as a homemade creation, AND in all probability the photo used may not be more than a nice laser copy(I doubt any photo collector would cut down their Bain to mount it on an unknown photographers common mount). Perhaps if they were a bit more knowledgable and used a Horner or the like.

These type of "cabinets" are usually found on Ebay and eventually some will filter into the more mainstream auctions.

Definitely Buyer Beware

[benchod]

Agree with the Scott's
It's a cabinet just not an original from the time period

[Runscott]

By the way, my opinions can be encapsulated along with a small slip, for a nominal fee. Each comes with a voucher for one free small cup of drip coffee.

[dbrown]

It's not unheard of to see a photo of a popular subject mounted and sold by a different photographer; I had a Horner photo of a famous bicyclist mounted and sold by another photographer on his mount. I'm sure the same thing happened with other popular subjects, actresses, baseball, etc. Possibly unauthorized copies and sales, but 'legitimate' cabinets from the time.

But you don't see that often, and 1911 seems a little late for that, I associate it more with the "golden age" of cabinets, 1880s, 1890s. Because of that -- and also some things going on with this Wagner photo, like the thin white line at the right edge and the x-acto-sharp corners of the image -- I'd be skeptical that this is real.

Did some looking around -- you can get a giant high-res file of this image from the Library of Congress:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008677272/

You can see that the "cabinet card" has less detail, muddier blacks, a flatter tone, and is in general a worse print -- which you might expect with a recent print rather than a vintage silver print. No smoking gun, just my two cents.

David

[joeadcock]

Appreciate the opinions here.

Certainly brings more questions. Probably never know the exact truth to this.

But what the heck, makes this whole collecting specialty more interesting.