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Posted By: Millerhouse

David,

The "postcard" versions of the T5 photos were published sometime later than the Pinkertons (some team names, for example, are changed to reflect Federal League teams), are on a stock that is even thicker than most postcards and tend to have a grainier appearance than the original photos. By contrast, the original T5 photos are on fairly classic photo stock paper, much thinner and generally portray a sharper image. To me, it would seem impossible to mistake the two.

Obviously, one could try to glue one of the reprints onto a T5 mount, but the result would look rather silly. (Without pulling out one of my "postcard" versions for comparison, I'm not even certain that the sizes would match up well.)

There seems little doubt that the expensive T5 of Jackson has an original T5 photo on it. However, if it is totally glued down, as I suspect it is, it has been doctored, which makes me suspect, even more, that there is a problem with the border also. If I were an unsuspecting purchaser, I'd be more angry about this than about the appearance of another T5 shortly after the auction. No matter how unique you might think something is in the pre-World War I card business, you never know when someone is going to find a cache of them undiscovered for years in someone's attic.

Dan