Albumen prints can range in quality (light, dark, etc), cuts, placement on the card. The prints can sometimes have goofy cuts and not be straight on the card.
Albumen prints are on very thin paper, you can see the paper fibers under a microscope, and sometimes have silvering (like a patina) the dark areas of the image. They also usually have a gloss.
All 19th century real photo baseball cards (N172, N173, Gypsy Queens, Peck and Snyder, Newsboy cabinets) are albumen photos. It was the most common paper photo process of the day. I would imagine you find variations of the image qualities of these cards, and how the prints were cut and placed on the mount for the cabinet cards.
Last edited by drc; 12-26-2012 at 12:09 AM.
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