How Baseball Cards Were Made in the 19th Century

[mouschi]

Thank you all for the comments so far! Specific responses below ...

Originally Posted by ocjack

Thanks. Interesting read and appreciate the pictures. And may I say that those are some of the best Grade 10 Allen and Ginter I have ever seen.

Thank you! Getting the entire set was a big deal for me (they came with the 40 others as well, but I sold them because I only care about baseball) - and they were all beautiful. The only real damage was to the backs!

Originally Posted by GaryPassamonte

I enjoyed your post very much. I share your passion for 19th century baseball. It's also nice to see mention of Ross Barnes. He's one of my main collecting interests, having been born in my hometown. Here's one of the teams he played on. It's too bad his career ended before baseball cards flourished in the late 1880s. I can see him on an N162 or N28, N29.

I agree! There are so many guys I would have loved to have seen in N28/N162/N172 form. Thanks for posting that pic - that piece is truly remarkable!

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Fantastic post!

I didn’t realize that they used several stones for each card. I assume one for each color but I see several shades of brown on a baseball bat, for example. A different stone for each shade as well?

There is a publication named "Prang's Prize Babies - How this picture is made." Here is a link to show the steps: https://gigi.mwa.org/netpub/server.n...ing=1&offset=0 - it shows there being 19 colors ... and in the text that they have even used 45 stones to create one lithograph. I always thought it was 4 or so. I'd love to know how many were used for the cards. As for the term "shade", I know I read it somewhere, but cannot place it. The link above does help illustrate how cumbersome it must have been.

[KCRfan1]

What a great read Tanner!

I love your custom cards and I'll never forget reading about your trip to meet Canseco at his home!

Classic stuff!

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by KCRfan1

What a great read Tanner!

I love your custom cards and I'll never forget reading about your trip to meet Canseco at his home!

Classic stuff!

Thank you Lou! It is crazy to think that the 5 year anniversary mark just passed from going to Jose's house. I love thinking back to what all happened

[steve B]

Originally Posted by mouschi

There is a publication named "Prang's Prize Babies - How this picture is made." Here is a link to show the steps: https://gigi.mwa.org/netpub/server.n...ing=1&offset=0 - it shows there being 19 colors ... and in the text that they have even used 45 stones to create one lithograph. I always thought it was 4 or so. I'd love to know how many were used for the cards. As for the term "shade", I know I read it somewhere, but cannot place it. The link above does help illustrate how cumbersome it must have been.

Great post!

They used as many colors as they needed, or as many as the customer would pay for. Many areas were patches of solid color. The dots similar to our modern halftones were done by hand, so the person doing that had a lot of control over the way it looked. Dark brown fading to light could be simply light brown with a tighter then looser pattern of dots that got smaller and farther apart. Or it could be Something similar over 2-4 patches of brown that get lighter.

You can usually pick out the colors looking with a good magnifier.

Most stuff I see was 6-8 colors, maybe a bit more or a bit less. (I sort of collect tradecards too) 45 would be a piece made to show off what the printer could do. Keeping that many colors all in registration was work for a real master. I don't think the art places still doing lithography that way even get close to that.

[ejharrington]

Thanks for sharing. I still have your website on Canseco on my cell phone. Every now and then I scroll through. 5,177 Canseco cards. Amazing!

[Jay Wolt]

That was a fun informative read, thanks for posting

[slantycouch]

Amazing read, Tanner. Thanks for posting! Those customs are so creative.

[Bpm0014]

Wow, great article!! Thanks!

[mouschi]

As always, thank you everyone!

Originally Posted by steve B

Great post!

They used as many colors as they needed, or as many as the customer would pay for. Many areas were patches of solid color. The dots similar to our modern halftones were done by hand, so the person doing that had a lot of control over the way it looked. Dark brown fading to light could be simply light brown with a tighter then looser pattern of dots that got smaller and farther apart. Or it could be Something similar over 2-4 patches of brown that get lighter.

You can usually pick out the colors looking with a good magnifier.

Most stuff I see was 6-8 colors, maybe a bit more or a bit less. (I sort of collect tradecards too) 45 would be a piece made to show off what the printer could do. Keeping that many colors all in registration was work for a real master. I don't think the art places still doing lithography that way even get close to that.

I am still in learning mode when it comes to all of this myself. I heard that the "stippling" was done by hand, but wonder ... wasn't all of it done by hand? Or perhaps they transfer to the stone and then do the stippling by hand on stone as opposed to relying upon the transfer. Any light you could shed on this for me would be appreciated! Also ... do you have any ideas how many stones may have been used for the A&G and Goodwin cards? I'd love to hear that as well!

Originally Posted by ejharrington

Thanks for sharing. I still have your website on Canseco on my cell phone. Every now and then I scroll through. 5,177 Canseco cards. Amazing!

Thanks! I scroll from time to time also Mainly I just have it up for a reference for everyone else, but I also go through it to see if there are any I'd like to try and get back. When I got back into it, I decided to do an entire base/base insert run and eventually got into picking up high end cards I wanted as well.

A couple weeks back, I decided to sell my base/base insert run, because I just never looked through them in the binders. I currently have about 250 Canseco cards (plus a binder of some base that someone gave me a few weeks ago that I keep in my closet) - but the 250 represents about 5% of what I used to have, but I am more satisfied with them now than I was when I had "everything". I can now really appreciate the special cards instead of always going after the next card I don't have.

[slantycouch]

Originally Posted by steve B

Great post!
Most stuff I see was 6-8 colors, maybe a bit more or a bit less. (I sort of collect tradecards too) 45 would be a piece made to show off what the printer could do. Keeping that many colors all in registration was work for a real master. I don't think the art places still doing lithography that way even get close to that.

I can't fathom keeping that many colors in registration.

Different printing process, but there are still screen shops testing their limits to create fine art. Here's a modern 21 screen print that is widely praised by collectors of this genre.