Just confirming the sheet layout. Corbett and Randall/Belasco were the most tenuous placements as I had to eyeball the cut of the edges from less than perfect photographs and guesstimate where they belonged.
The guesstimate was correct. The Randall/Belasco is indeed above Coburn, fitting in perfectly in it's cut against both him and Jackson. Randall's back is more toned than the others - I suspect it was the one stored on top, upside down. We will probably never know the full backstory of who had these and brought them to the antiques dealer who sold them for pennies (Twice! The second time after being made aware of what they had), but it seems these sat untouched for a century in the NY area.
Corbett fit's in perfectly with Frayne. It is the only top edge panel with the white cut off, but most of the left side cards have their border trimmed off (only Choyinski has the sheet's left border, confirming for us that that it is indeed 5 panels to a row, 20 cards per row). As we have 23 of the original 25 surviving and only 1 with the corner still present (Jordan), this makes sense. What I took to be small staple or pin holes in the Corbett from the picture turned out not to be holes on close examination; it was just detritus that brushed right off when touched.
In hand, almost every card has differences between it's 8 copies, so that I can match a specific copy of a final production card to which of the 8 slots it came from. Donovan is difficult to do this for, the 8 are all very very similar. McGovern and Driscoll are the easiest. There are noticeable differences in the red on the Corbett's. It would be interesting to see if the surviving Corbett's all track to the same slot or not, but I haven't saved pictures of the ones I've seen, only the Donovan's.
Ryan and McAuliffe evidently have not survived to modernity (the single McAuliffe proof card that exists is almost certainly not from this sheet and source), and must be the lower left and lower right corners, though which is which we probably will never know. Should anyone have a miscut of these cards, a picture would be greatly appreciated.
Attached are the fake news 'holes', the sheet put together as it has been reconstituted today, and then the full layout with the Choyinski's recreated as best as I can, and Ryan/McAuliffe placed one each where they would have gone.
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