Wide World photo back stamp
 

Was curious if it was common for Wide World photos not to stamp their photos in the 1950's and just have a brief brown sniper glued to the back?

Wide world photos are the only agency that still print photos to this day. I have seen some that have captions with dates from the 50s but look like they were created yesterday. They are very hard to reliably date. I personally avoid them if possible. I've seen some people say they can be dated based on what stamp is used, but I can't imagine they don't still have legacy stamps on hand. The brown paper on the back is called a slug not a sniper. All that said I have definitely seen many legitimate ww photos with captions on the back and no stamp.

Post a pic and I'll give my opinion.