Posted By:
AnonymousBased on the following observations, and Robert's Maddox example...
- the "proof" photo is of poorer quality, as are most, if not all, of the "proof" images I have seen so far.
- there is more photo on the bottom right of the actual Maddox Colgan card.
I believe that the "proof" is a reproduction of a real Colgan that was cut a little differently from the real Colgan that Robert shows. I think that all of the Colgan proofs are cheap reproductions of real Colgans, and were created to fit in some sort of square box, probably caramels. It was common back then to "borrow" photos, so perhaps someone had access to most (or all)of the Colgans and decided they would be easy enough to create in a square version that would be more appropriate for including as an insert in their product.
It's not odd that many of them had black paper on the back - these quite possibly were created in the late 1910's when black paper was commonly used in scrapbooks - I have had many old photos with black bits of paper attached. Square b&w photos of baseball players would have been great scrap-book material.
Of course, the "salesman sample" and other theories are equally valid (maybe more so), since we don't have much to go on.
"Re-creating history is both fun and easy." - principle of Liberal education