Original Photos Used On Baseball Cards

[JollyElm]

The funniest part about that 1956 card (aside from changing history to show 'The Mick' making the grab) is how Topps took the column of gentlemen on the far left of the original photograph, and also slotted them into the far right of the active area. I mean, they're freakin' looking the wrong way, for cripes sake!!!!

Conventional wisdom held that the intent was to fill some empty seats to add more excitement, but that doesn't really hold water. If you examine the picture by looking at how much of the shot above Mantle's mitt is in play on the card, you can see it would end just a touch above the necktied guy sitting down at right, which would include only a negligible amount of no-show seating. A better answer is the original photograph (assuming it hasn't been cropped over there) abruptly ends on the right side, so they needed to add space for the layout to work more effectively, and that was their quick solution...

1956ToppsMantlepiccrowd.jpg


When the image of those gents was repeated, they should have flipped it horizontally to literally get their heads in the game. Come on, Topps!!! Here is just a quick copy and paste...

1956ToppsMantlepiccrowdCORRECTED.jpg

Oh well.

[GasHouseGang]

Darren, you're right. That would have looked better. Since we were talking about the 1956 Topps, here's the portrait Mantle photo used on the 1956 Mick.

[Frankish]

Those Mantles are amazing.

Let me see, I have a lot of these card image type 1 photos somewhere. Here are two, a Williams Play Ball image and a Berra 1951 Type 1 used for the 56T card....

[Frankish]

Ugh. Attachments.

[Frankish]

1950 Barney Stein photo used for the 1950 and 1951 Bowman cards and an original Tom Landry photo used for the 1955 Bowman card.

[bgar3]

A couple Ashburn’s used on multiple early cards, including his rookie, and the image used for his Hall of Fame plaque, by Wingfield.

[cgjackson222]

David, thank you for starting this thread. I love seeing the original photography behind these cards.

Here is one of my favorite images.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

The funniest part about that 1956 card (aside from changing history to show 'The Mick' making the grab) is how Topps took the column of gentlemen on the far left of the original photograph, and also slotted them into the far right of the active area. I mean, they're freakin' looking the wrong way, for cripes sake!!!!

That is a great observation, Jolly - thanks for pointing that out. I have seen the original action picture before, but never noticed that.