Ode to Pre-War Football Cardboard

[cfhofer]

Thanks Jeff. My wife didn't take a photo of the cover but it was a BIN on Ebay. I got a couple requests for the other team photos.

1888 Yale Crew


1889 Yale Baseball

[revmoran]

Glad you got that Mark - really great photos - sent me right to eBay and saw another, older Yale book by Pach, but no sports photos - I wonder if they customized which photos went in the book for the buyer.

[cfhofer]

I think they were Mike. There was a wonderful 1889 Yale SSS yearbook that was auctioned in Feb 2013 (see link below). It contains completely different sports photos despite being from the same year. I wonder how much Pach Bros charged back then?

http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lo...0-c-5bc2f13e67

Mark

[revmoran]

They were a great studio - I bet somewhere out there is a catalog or price list. I especially like this Pach Bros. albumin print I bought of Jarvis Field

[revmoran]

I found this in another thread http://www.net54baseball.com/archive...?t-164861.html

Before I get into the album on eBay let me say these are NOT like books and magazines that get "chop shopped". Each individual would order a "standard" book from pach bros but could also customize the books as well. these were made as unique items for specific students with their names engraved on the front. Each page is an albumen cabinet photo (real albumen cabinet photos by the way) with two images glued to a blank cabinet. There are then 2 blank backed cabinet cards that are lightly glued together and tipped into the book with linen. These cabinet photos can easily be separated back to how they were originally produced by the photographer to two blank backed images which can be cut in half to leave two cabinet photos. What is left are two completely original album photos, on their original mounts with the original glue.

I did find this ad in the 1889 Yale Banner, but it doesn't tell us much

[cfhofer]

Mike,

The yearbook referred to in that thread is a cheaper version. It seems Pach Bros created those in the late 1890s where lower quality photos were glued onto cardboard pages. Some dealers cut these pages up and sell them off as original photos.

These earlier Pach Bros yearbooks are much nicer. They contain individual cabinet photos which are slid into sleeves for easy removal. The photo quality is top notch. The smaller photos have the Pach Bros stamp along the bottom.

[revmoran]

I'm surprised I can't find a website dedicated to the history of Pach Bros. - small collections in the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, and a nice history here http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html.../bioghist.html which says:

A dramatic fire on February 16, 1895 completely burned out the Pach studios that were located on the top floor of the buildings at 935 and 937 Broadway. An account in the New York Timess (February 17, 1895, p. 17) stated that there were thirty employees at work in the studio, and twenty patrons sitting for their portraits, when the fire started in the negative retouching room. No lives were lost, though all negatives created in the New York and the college satellite studios from the time of the firm's founding were destroyed.