Honest seller or not?

[SMPEP]

Not sure I can fully agree with that theory.

I have seen about 20 original wire photos for the 1952 set, and in every case the Topps card was cropped down from the original picture.

Also, how would they do this? Topps used the photo negatives to transfer onto glass printing plates. So it's not like they could have drawn up an artistic version add added a top to the card.

Also why would they do that? There are many other cards in the set that don't show the full tower or full bat. Why would they go to the trouble to do that on this card.

They did remove the detail of the photo (the pinstripes, even his teeth disappear), but it is obviously the same photo. if you look carefully in the background you can even see the baseline by his elbow.

My theory (and I have no idea if this is true or not!) is that this wire photo was cropped from the original negative, and Topps used the original negative.

But as I mentioned above, every other photo is a larger picture than the Topps card, and thus I suspect this photo was cropped to a greater degree than Topps did with the original negative.

Cheers,
Patrick