Charles Conlon Fakes, Baseball Magazine Stickers & A Brief Tutorial

[GKreindler]

Bravo to both of you, Rhys and Ben. Wonderful thread that I'm sure is going to be SUPER helpful to a lot of people.

Graig

[prewarsports]

In my opinion the older the photo the more often it was trimmed. Pre WWI, you see A LOT of trimmed photos. In some archives as much as 80% of the pre WWI images are trimmed at some point by the newspaper editors or even the photographers by themselves. It has a lot to do with photographic processes at the time. Many collectors resort to the thinking that if it was trimmed before and has left a wavy inconsistent edge, cleaning it up a bit by trimming it nicer is not a sin, but touching a border that is original just to improve its condition is not acceptable. Similar to the philosophy of strip cards on the baseball side. If the card was already ripped or trimmed, most people don't care if you clean it up a bit. If you take an untouched sheet of strip cards and trim them all to make mint condition cards for grading, your going to have some detractors. After WWII you rarely see trimmed images with the exception of wire photos where newspapers often took off the captions and glued them to the back so they would not show up in publication.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by prewarsports

In my opinion the older the photo the more often it was trimmed. Pre WWI, you see A LOT of trimmed photos. In some archives as much as 80% of the pre WWI images are trimmed at some point by the newspaper editors or even the photographers by themselves. It has a lot to do with photographic processes at the time. Many collectors resort to the thinking that if it was trimmed before and has left a wavy inconsistent edge, cleaning it up a bit by trimming it nicer is not a sin, but touching a border that is original just to improve its condition is not acceptable. Similar to the philosophy of strip cards on the baseball side. If the card was already ripped or trimmed, most people don't care if you clean it up a bit. If you take an untouched sheet of strip cards and trim them all to make mint condition cards for grading, your going to have some detractors. After WWII you rarely see trimmed images with the exception of wire photos where newspapers often took off the captions and glued them to the back so they would not show up in publication.

Agree with all of this. There will be people who trim after the fact no doubt. It is unfortunate but nothing can really be done. If you like an image that is trimmed, buy it knowing many were trimmed but it is possible it was done later.
As far as value goes... a full image will always be better than one trimmed with everything else equal. HOWEVER... many images are 1-5 of a kinds particularly pre-ww1 so really, it doesn't detract it at all. Particularly if Rhys' 80% rule is close. Do the math... beggars can't be choosers if they want a particular image and A trimmed version is all that is available..

Originally Posted by Runscott

Mark, Burkes are special only in the sense that there is a larger year range of prints where you can't tell what part of the range they were printed in. If there was no type system, as a photo collector you would treat all such prints the same. Same for the Ruth photos - how are you going to know that the 1919 print is actually a 1919 print, and not a 1915? In essence, both examples are treated the same - it's just that with Burkes it is more likely that you will call something 'Type I' when it was actually printed outside the 2-year range.

I don't think I have ever actually written 'in essence'.

Thank you for your objectiveness Scotty. To set the record straight... IDK what PSA DNA does exactly here. It is just what I have gathered by different paper and stamps burke used coupled with the authenticated examples I have seen. These(burke) were open to the public(not news photos) and obtained directly from burke studios. Therefore, they are a different animal all together.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

Thank you for your objectiveness Scotty. To set the record straight... IDK what PSA DNA does exactly here. It is just what I have gathered by different paper and stamps burke used coupled with the authenticated examples I have seen. These(burke) were open to the public(not news photos) and obtained directly from burke studios. Therefore, they are a different animal all together.

Hey, I have plenty of love to pass around. Yep, agreed about the Burkes. We have at least one Burke stamp expert on the forum, so I'm sure there are plenty of times where the range can be narrowed.

Unfortunately I can't agree about the trimming. If your vintage print has the photographer's or journalist's notes trimmed partially off on the edges, it was most likely a modern seller trying to increase his profits. The argument that it was done 'back in the day' is an old and oft-heard one, but why in the world would a photographer or journalist trim their own notes off the edges of their photograph?

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Hey, I have plenty of love to pass around. Yep, agreed about the Burkes. We have at least one Burke stamp expert on the forum, so I'm sure there are plenty of times where the range can be narrowed.

Unfortunately I can't agree about the trimming. If your vintage print has the photographer's or journalist's notes trimmed partially off on the edges, it was most likely a modern seller trying to increase his profits. The argument that it was done 'back in the day' is an old and oft-heard one, but why in the world would a photographer or journalist trim their own notes off the edges of their photograph?

Yes on Burkes! Boo on trimming
I am confused what you are not agreeing on in regard to the trimming?
Rhys is correct in most were already trimmed and I said that no doubt peeps will trim more at times to make look better. The fact of the matter is.. a large amount of them were trimmed "back in the day".

As far as your example goes.. who knows. Maybe they(news service) wanted to put it is a smaller folder after writing was put on, maybe they trimmed to send in mail, maybe they trimmed down to exact publication size after writing was applied. As you know, many photos were used numerous times so it could have been trimmed by someone other than the guy who made original markings. Or.. maybe it was trimmed recently like you stated. Point is.. there are no absolutes. That said.. many photos were ABSOLUTELY trimmed during the course of publication.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

Yes on Burkes! Boo on trimming
I am confused what you are not agreeing on in regard to the trimming?
Rhys is correct in most were already trimmed and I said that no doubt peeps will trim more at times to make look better. The fact of the matter is.. a large amount of them were trimmed "back in the day".

As far as your example goes.. who knows. Maybe they(news service) wanted to put it is a smaller folder after writing was put on, maybe they trimmed to send in mail, maybe they trimmed down to exact publication size after writing was applied. As you know, many photos were used numerous times so it could have been trimmed by someone other than the guy who made original markings. Or.. maybe it was trimmed recently like you stated. Point is.. there are no absolutes. That said.. many photos were ABSOLUTELY trimmed during the course of publication.

Hey, nothing wrong with two people disagreeing. Neither one of us was around to see any of the trimming. Sure, anyone with a pair of scissors could have trimmed any photo; however, for the reasons I have already stated, I think it is mostly modern sellers doing it to increase profits. You are right - there are no absolutes - but as long as we are talking about this thread being something to help us move forward to make the hobby better, it can't hurt to encourage today's sellers to put their scissors away - from the looks of some of the large groups of photos now making their appearance in the hobby, it's apparent that the trimming is still going on. Sure, it doesn't kill the value to the collector to clean up the edges, but I'm fairly sure most collectors would rather it wasn't done.

Maybe we should start a poll?

[prewarsports]

I think one thing people forget is that in the case of press photos, these were functional tools of an industry. Much more similar to game used bats and equipment than baseball cards but because they are flat and have images of baseball players, people want to treat them like the latter. These things were ripped, trimmed, die-cut, cut out, painted, drawn all over, traced and rubbed by engravers and used over and over again for an endless number of purposes to fit whatever the newspaper or publication wanted. Often times it was a space issue, other times the images were trimmed and laid out to create a composite and then returned to their folders. Also, when dealing with pre-WWI images, many of the images that look trimmed were actually broken off. Silver gelatin photographs from the era were very brittle and if a photo got folded over in a file cabinet it didn't crease, it broke at whatever angle it was folded at. many of these images were also taken by staff photographers and maybe their budget only allowed for a certain amount of photo-paper so they might have been trimmed before the images were even developed onto them. These variables and the functionality of early photography ad to the appeal for me and many collectors. You are holding something in your hand with inherent history (the person photographed) but also a piece of American publishing history with a unique story to tell all on its own!