not Fred Dunlap at Heritage

[oldjudge]

Barry--Are you sure they are trimmed? My sense is that they were just produced and cut this way. Pete Calderone says they are all the same size.

[oldjudge]

Barry--I've done a little research and I think you are right. Here is a site with images of some of the full cabinets. Click on the 1874 Philadelphia images and you can see the full cabinets

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...Disch:1&itbs=1

[barrysloate]

Jay- as we just discussed these are standard cabinets with the name of the photographer printed at the bottom. The ones in the auction have been significantly trimmed down. Perhaps Heritage was not aware of any original cabinets. Hopefully they will amend the description.

[bmarlowe1]

Well - thanks to a very astute reader of my newsletter, I now know who that guy is in the photo that started this thread.

He is a ballplayer. If Heritage wants to know, they can contact me.

[nameless]

Look at the eyes in the photos. It sucks because you would think Heritage who does more than just sports memorabilia would be on top of this!

[benjulmag]

Barry is quite correct. The mounts of each of these cabinets are badly trimmed. They are each undersized for 1870's cabinets and possess border skewing and corner sharpness that can be explained only by trimming. Here is the link that shows the Philadephia cabinets in the Spalding Collection at the New York Public Library. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypld...word=athletics. If you click on a particular cabinet, it will show a blowup. And if you click the image of the verso, it will show the studio (the same as that which produced the Heritage images). Clicking on "Image Details" will give particulars such as the dimensions. Each cabinet is materially larger than those in Heritage, is cropped much differently by not having the photo go to the edge of the mount, does not exhibit uneven toning, and has round corners (which were how they were issued -- no untrimmed 19th cabinets have corners such as those in Heritage).

Almost certainly the Heritage cabinets were at one time mounted under an overlay for the purpose of making a composite of the team (a typical 19th century procedure). That explains both the trimming and the toning. Albumen photos when originally issued were much less toned than how they appear many years later. The toning is caused by exposure and is irreversible. The portion of each photo that was protected by the overlay and therefore had less exposure is significantly lighter in toning. Here is a link to another lot in the current Heritage sale.
http://sports.ha.com/common/view_ite...8&Lot_No=80002. This Cdv was once part of a composite of the 1872 Boston Red Stockings and too was covered by an overlay for many years. I know the person who first acquired it and removed the overlay. Each underlying Cdv was badly trimmed and showed comparable toning to the Philadelphia cabinets.

[barrysloate]

As I said earlier I would hope Heritage amends the description. This is a really significant lot that deserves an accurate writeup. If the winning bidder plans to have these graded none of them will receive anything except an Authentic designation. And as Corey stated it was not unusual for a photographic studio to cut down original photos to reshoot the image. Anytime you see a composite CdV or cabinet photograph, it was almost certainly made by first shooting a larger image and then reducing its size. To my knowledge there is no known composite photo of the 1874 Athletics, but not every 19th century image has survived.

Just wanted to add I removed the overlay on the 1872 Boston composite before I sold it. All the bidders knew this during the auction.