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Posted By: davidcycleback

I got my date a bit off. The first true color photograph was the autochrome, which was a glass photo invented in 1904, but didn't hit the market until 1907. By true color, I mean it showed the true colors of the subject-- it wasn't a black and white photo colorized.

I don't know, but would guess that Peter is correct that the 53 Bowman Colors are the first 'true color' baseball cards-- meaning true colors of the subject and no colorization of black and white images. The Bowmans aren't photographs, but have true color images. There are earlier magazine covers and pictures that are true color, but evidently it took a while for baseball cards.

The 1957 Topps baseball have true color images, and I've seen the original color transparencies auctioned. A transparency is the same thing as a negative, and used just like a negative, except the images are positive not negative. If you hold a transparency to the light the image look normal like a normal photo.

For normal, everyday paper photography (ala Kodak family snapshots), color photographs can be found in the 1930s but examples are rare. 1940s more common, but still unusual. For example, how many true color images have you seen of Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein or Lou Gehrig? Can you think of a Humphrey Bogart movie that was in color? Color photography was around (1939's Wizard of Oz was in Color), but it wasn't used often.

Collectors can find early 1900s autochromes for auction, including on eBay, thought rarely if ever of sports scenes. As historical objects they can be valuable, and often have neat images to boot. As they're glass, you don't have to be a photo expert to be confident you have the real item and not a home computer reprint.

For those unfamiliar but intrigued with early photography, there is a whole series of photographs on glass, and a collector could specialize in just glass photographs. This includes the autochrome, ambrotype (essentially a tintype on glass), orotone (backed in genuine gold giving a gold color), opaltype (on white glass), glass slides (including colorized silent movie slides) and glass negatives. I've seen baseball examples for all of these except the autochrome. All Charles Conlon's Pre-War original negatives were on glass, and, in an article, he wrote how he was forced to destroy many of them as they running him out of his house.

And the nice thing for collectors interested in glass photographs is they quit using glass for photographs a long time ago. So if you pick up a glass photo at an antique store, you can be confident it's vintage.