Colgan Proofs/Squares

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Posted By: John Remington

Hankron, thanks for this nugget.

One of the puzzling characteristics of my specimens, which are now all scanned and available for viewing at ebay (userid also scupperjohnnie) is the small brown spots many of them have, and are very noticeable on these:

Lelivelt

Harry Davis


Jake Daubert


Yes, it's hard to image an early 20th century teenager coming up with printers proofs.

It's much easier, and more pleasant, to imagine that teenager retrieving the square from the bottom of the box with his fingers sticky from stuffing caramels in his mouth.

Though I suppose, if these things run in the family, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that same teen pulling the card from a pilfered pack of smokes with his nicotined stained fingers...

But I wax romantic.

As for the photos being the exclusive property of Colgan's, I made an interesting discovery the other day while re-paging through the scrapbook. I found a newspaper clipping that carried the same photo of Chief Bender that appears on the 1911 Philadelphia Athletics Notebook Cover, attributed to the Associated Press. Another clipping in the scrapbook carried the same photo of Stuffy McInnes (attributed to the great photographer Charles M. Conlon no less) that is used in my collection of miniature portraits clipped from an insert or magazine.

I'd speculate that the photographers, or more likely, the news syndicates, were simply mining their inventory by licensing their photo inventories to whomever was willing to pay for the publishing rights.

Cheers,

John