Cycleback’s The Vintage Collector
4-17-2002
Q & A
by David Rudd
QUESTION: Who was Barry Halper? I've seen his name used in conjunction with
two auctions.
ANSWER: Barry Halper was, and is, an American
businessman, minority owner of the New York Yankees baseball team, and
collector of baseball memorabilia. He
started collecting before memorabilia was worth anything, and ended up with an
incredible collection. It was often
said that he had the best collection outside the Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown New York. He eventually
donated a portion of his collection to the Hall of Fame, where there is now the
Barry Halper Wing. Another portion was
auctioned off for $25 million or so in 1999 through Sotheby's. You can still buy the Sotheby's catalog of
this auction, in 3 Volumes, through amazon and those places. I highly recommend it.
QUESTION: What do you think of the 'authorized'
reprints of paintings that are signed and numbered by the artist? I bid on one of these by Dick Perez..
ANSWER: These are autographed reprint
posters. If that's what you want to
buy, I'm not going to stop you.
QUESTION:
David, sorry if you answered this before, which I think you did. Is a black light good for identifying
trimmed baseball cards? Also, are there
legitimate size variations with the T206 cards. I have three that are shorter than the others but look perfectly
legitimate. They are in lower grade, so
I doubt they would have been trimmed.
ANSWER:
While others may have had different experience, I have not found black
light useful in judging trimming of trading cards.
The T206 cards naturally range in size, meaning
a card can be smaller than normal and not be trimmed. Many collectors collect lower grade cards in part because
deceptive trimming is unlikely and easier to identify.
QUESTION: At the Cycleback website there is link
on 'Obscure Early Photographs.' How
hard is it to find those photographs with baseball or sports subjects, and what
would their values be?
ANSWER: I don't closely follow the other sports
photographs-wise, so I will stick to baseball.
I have seen two circa 1880s orotones (gold backed glass photograph) of
common major leaguers players in uniform.
I can't remember who the players were.
While orotones can be extremely beautiful, these were of so-so quality,
and sold about $800-900 a piece. I have
not seen other baseball orotones, though I'm sure they exist. Other sport orotones will exist.
I've never seen a baseball ivorytype or
opaltype, though they theoretically could exist. Across the board, these are much rarer and more expensive than a
comparative orotone.
QUESTION: If I have an old real photo postcard,
what are the chances that it is unique?
ANSWER:
Depends. In the early 1900s many
real photos were used as family photos, a replacement for the cabinet
card. I have one of my grandfather in
his sailor suit during World War I.
These types of non-commercial photographs were originally made in very
limited numbers, and many examples are likely to be unique.
QUESTION: This question is about expensive
original prints by famous artists. Are
the typical counterfeits sophisticated?
Like how hard are they do differentiate the counterfeit with the
original?
ANSWER:
In the vast majority of cases, the counterfeit is not subtly but
significantly different than the original.
Commonly, they are reproductions of the original, and this can be
identified by closely examining the printing.
For example, if the original is an engraving made up of solid lines under
magnifying glass, the reproduction may be a half-tone lithograph made of the
typical dots
Also, most to all of a famous artist's prints
are cataloged, with details such as how many were made, how and where they were
numbered and signed and so on. So if
the official catalog (catalog raisonne) says that only 300 of a print were made
and numbered, and you see one numbered out #500, it should be obvious that
something is goofy.
In short, identifying the vast majority of
counterfeits should not be a problem for the collector who does his or her
homework.
QUESTION: I collect 1850s- woodcuts from
newspapers, especially from Harper's Weekly.
I know that some of the Harper's Weeklies were reprinted. I am hoping you can provide information on
identifying the reprints.
ANSWER: As Harper's woodcuts are popularly
collected this is a common concern. I hope to provide an article on that in the
near future.
QUESTION: Can you provide information on how to
use black light on glass and other non paper stuff.
ANSWER: I can't offer help on glass items, but
will recommend the book, 'Black Light Book" published by Antique
Collectors and Reproduction News.
Website www.repronews.com
QUESTION:
Two questions. How do you store
panorama photographs, and what is more expensive an antique panorama that is a
print or a real photograph?
ANSWER:
I don't buy panoramas, because I don't want to have to deal with the
handling, storage, shipping issues. I'm
lazy and like things to fit into a priority mail box or smaller (God love
trading cards). All other qualities even,
the real photo panorama will be more valuable.
QUESTION:
I have two 1800s cabinet card photographs and I'm not sure how old they
are. One has a dark gray mount with an
oval picture and a fancy design around the picture. The second also has gray mount that is perfectly square and a
square picture with a design around it.
Do these even count as cabinet cards?
ANSWER:
From the scans you sent me, they are from the early 1900s. Whenever you have a cabinet card with very
wide borders and has embossment around the picture, it's probably from the
1900s. A dark grey mount is common from
this time. In the 1900s, the pictures
were often circular or oval. You can
call them cabinet cards if you wish.
Before about 1907, cabinet card was an industry standard, kind of like
Double A Battery or Size 10 Shoe, with a pre-described size and shape. After this time, the standard was set aside
and things became more informal. This
means that your two photographs, even though the second one is a slightly
abnormal shape, can reasonably be and commonly called a cabinet card.
QUESTION: I've heard that if the Lou Gehrig
Ken-Wel Advertising Sign has a metal eyelet on the top it's a reprint. Have you heard this? I think I may have heard it from you.
ANSWER:
I can't promise that it's true, but I've heard the same. I owned a reprint a few years back and, if I
recall correctly, it had an eyelet.
Most of the reprints I've seen for sale are beat up-heavily creased,
soiled.
QUESTION: What kind of printing is used on old postcards?
ANSWERS: Postcards are a wild bunch and have
used near all types of prints from woodcuts to engravings, hand drawn to hand
painted. The printers often mixed and
matched printing types on a card, which makes it even more complicated. However if you pick a random early one
from, say 1920s, it's probably a photoengraving. This is the same type of printing used to make newspaper,
magazines and books. It can be black and
white or in color, and these postcards are usually glossy, because to make quality
images with photoengraving one needed a really smooth surface.
A lot of postcards are lithographs. From normal view, these usually look like a
photoengraving. Usually one needs a
microscope to tell the difference, unless on the back it says 'photoengraved
by' or 'Such and Such lithograph company.'
A lot of postcards with photographically
realistic images are collotypes, which I talked about a few weeks earlier. These usually have a matte surface and often
were made by the Albertype Co.
There are a lot of real photo postcards
(postcards with actual photographs on the front). Nearly all are gelatin-silver prints, usually with black and
white or sepia tinged images. Ones with
bright blue images are cyanotypes.
QUESTION:
Are vintage hand colored postcards worth more or less that non hand
colored postcards?
ANSWER: All other things even and assuming the
hand coloring was well done, the hand colored will usually be of higher value.
QUESTION: In old 1800s tobacco cards, why are
some images so much lighter than others?
ANSWER: A variety of reasons, including poor
exposure at the time and bad aging.
Perhaps the photographer was having a bad day. For albumen print photographs, the images tend to lighten and
yellow with age, and some will age worse than others.
Also, it can be related to the way they were
made. Some 1880s tobacco cards were
made from the original photographic glass negative. Many, however, are reprints- or a photograph of an already
existing photograph. All Old Judges,
for example, are based on original cabinet cards that were made by regional
photographic studios. For example, a
Philadelphia photographer would take photos of the Philadelphia players and
send the resulting cabinet photographs to the tobacco company. Newsletter reader, Trevor Howking, showed me
one of the original regional cabinet cards used by Old Judge. The cardboard mount had the advertising for
the regional studio, and across the photograph was embossed the copyright
Goodwin & Co (the maker of Old Judge cigarettes).
Sometimes an image was re-photographed again for
different trading card issues. I'm sure
many collectors have seen how images are shared between issues. All this photographing of photographs often
resulted in light or otherwise poor images.
As shown in last newsletter's gallery on
composite photographs, photographing already existing photographs was common
practice. This practice can make it
both practically and philosophically difficult to determine if a photograph is
or is not truly original.