"t206 Origins" page is up - any scans are very welcome

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Posted By: runscott

I'm looking for the b&w photos used to create the t206 cards. The following page now has 8, and I have several more I haven't scanned yet. If you have access to any that you wouldn't mind contributing, that would be great - Thanks! Some of them, like Lajoie and Beaumont, I have the b&w photos, but not the card.

http://www.homestead.com/runscott/Basic.html

I plan on expanding this page out to include other t206-related stuff as well - any thoughts?

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Posted By: Bill Cornell

Nice site, Scott.

Many, if not most, of the T206 portraits were made from photographs taken at the Charles (Carl) Horner Studio located at 11 Winter St., Boston, MA, now the home of a bagel shop. Horner was the official photographer of baseball for a number of years at the beginning of the 20th century.

Horner's photos first appeared on cards, cabinet and otherwise, in the W600 and W601 Sporting Life and the E107 Breisch-Williams sets in 1902-03. To the best of my knowledge, the entire T204 set in 1909 is made up of Horner photos, along with many of the T205 and T206 portraits.

I don't know of one resource where these photos can be found, although I have seen some in the reserved section at the Boston Public Library. Unfortunately, the library expects you to know what you're looking for and won't make a special effort to find things...

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Posted By: runscott

Great info! It's fun just grabbing them wherever they can be found - doesn't matter if it takes a while. I don't mind using Fatima or Ramly images until someone finds a clearer image. The others on the site came from magazines. I found the "Bender pitching" and "Reulbach throwing" in a Spalding Guide - the Reach guides have some as well.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

I especially like Kling; the little lift to the left side of his mouth didn't come through in the card.

So where's the Wagner from, anyway?

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Posted By: Craig D

Nice interesting site you have started Scott. I hope to contribute. As a note, I think you'll find that your photo of Frank Chance actually goes along with the Red background version T206 instead of the one you have it linked to.

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Posted By: Brian Hodes

I think the Wagner photo looks a lot like the Fan Craze picture -- if I knew how I would insert a picture of the Fan Craze here along with a "REAL OLD REPRINT" of the (in)famous T206 Wagner.

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Posted By: John Wojak

Scott, isn't the Jennings photo you posted as being similar or close to the T206 card the exact pose used on his caramel issues like e92 and e101?

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Posted By: runscott

...but I've already expanded that page just a bit, to include scans of other cards using the same photo as the t206 - just added the e95 Chance, so if you can send scans I'll add yours to the Jennings scan.

It also could start an interesting debate: are the t206 portraits always better than the caramel versions? After looking at the Chance pics, I'm sure that's not always the case. The Collins' are very close and the t206 Evers might have an edge over the e95. The Willis pics came from the same b&w, but look nothing alike - I would love the original b&w portraits of these cards to include with the t206/e95 scans side-by-side. I also might take the e96 Jennings portrait over the t206, just because of it's surreal look.

My primary goal for the site is to delve into the production process, so I'll be adding scans of miscuts,scrap,ghosted images, etc., once I decide how to go about it. Pete's "printing process" url would be a great link. Actually, I'm sort of ... WAITING FOR ART AND DOUG'S BOOK FOR MORE INSIGHTS!!!!

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Posted By: David

Interesting setup, especially the pictures that show the complete image that the T206s were cropped from

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Posted By: runscott