Jim Tobin card or photo id

[nolemmings]

I believe your Tobin photo is a Geo. Burke repro or Burke/Brace, not Conlon.

[drc]

I know in the circa 1950s, photographer Jim Rowe sold blank backed about 3x5 photos in catalogs. Probably for collecting and for TTM autograph getting. They included contemporary players and reproductions of old time players back the the 19th century. The Boston Herald repro resemble's those photos. As they were sold commercially for collectors' purposes and are about card size, some might say they are borderline baseball cards . . . I had a bunch of the photos with Rowe's typed original receipt.

[thecatspajamas]

Sorry, I completely blanked on the dimensions you gave. I had something smaller in my mind, but if yours are 3-1/2"x5-1/2", they are exactly as Todd and David said. The Tobin in particular is definitely a George Burke photo, most likely printed from the original negative, but at a much later period than when it was taken. As David said, Jim Rowe had a great many of George Burke's negatives that he obtained from Burke's assistant/apprentice George Brace, who took on Burke's photo archives when his health was failing in the late 1940's. Both Rowe and Brace produced copius prints from Burke's negatives. From the 50's to I'm guessing the late 70's or early 80's, they had the same standard Kodak real photo postcard back, with more recent ones having the blank back like your Tobin due to the Kodak back stock being more difficult to obtain (per Mary, Brace's daughter). Based on that, I would say the blank-backed Tobin is a "real photo postcard" (minus the printed postcard markings) produced somewhere from the 1980's on. I don't recognize the handwriting as Rowe's, Brace's, or Mary's, though I belive Mary at least has had help from other family members in recent years (she just recently sold or transferred the archives to John Rogers' outfit, judging by the change in contact info on the bracephoto website and large number of Burke negatives popping up in Rogers' usual outlets in the last few months).

Edited to add: Good luck in putting together a "set" of Rowe or Brace postcards, as either would number into the many thousands. Team sets from a given year would be much more realistic, and that is how many collectors bought them. Both men used images from other sources as well, particularly for earlier (pre-1930's) photos, and quality varies widely on those. Brace developed some skill under Burke as a photographer, and continued to take his own photos up into the late 1980's, whereas Rowe appears to have been more of an amateur, which often shows in the quality of his prints.

A few other Tobin photos by Burke for your amusement:

1931-39 Pittsburgh Pirates (3-1/2"x5-1/2")


1940 Boston Bees (4"x6")


1941-45 Boston Braves (3-1/2"x5-1/2")

[RCMcKenzie]

Thank y'all for the help.... I went and looked at the rest of the cards that came in the lot and found this John Hiller postcard with "Rowe" written on the back. I did not look at it earlier because I knew it was from around the late 60's early seventies. Hiller is in the Canadian Hall of Fame, so he's got that going for him.

I bought this lot because it had a T227 in it that I needed toward the 25 card set. I was hoping to resell these, but now realize that the Goudey Simmons is the only card besides the T227 worth more than a dollar or so.


rowehiller.jpgrowehillerb.jpg


Also, I think I was using the wrong terminology earlier. When I said "later generation", I meant a photo, made from an original negative, many years after it had been taken. The Tobin photo is much clearer than these other marked postcards , a little smaller than 3 1/2 by 5 1/2, and at first I thought I may have had a $20 item, which would have covered my bid.