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hankronThe norm was that the albumen print was made first, then mounted. To make the image, the photo paper was submerged in liquid chemicals, and they had to dry out the photo before putting it on the mount. As you can imaging, havine the photo paper and cardboard mount (or book pages or scorecard!) dunked in a chemical bath wouldn't work so hot.
As some know, the N172s started as one big uncut sheet of many card images-- actually one big composite photo. Goodwin then cut this big photo down into individual cards, not unlike Topps' printers cutting down a 1980 Topps sheet .... Cartes de visitie (mini cabinet cards) also started as one big photo made of smaller individual photos. The big photo was cut down and the individual images pasted to the mounts ... On occasion, you will see CDVs in uncut form.