PSA photo authentication - a suggestion

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

This also correlates to what Craig was saying about photos coming from players' personal collections being in better condition. Often those were placed in albums, file cabinets, trunks, or "archived" in some other way and sat untouched for decades. They were treated as keepsakes, not tools of the trade. You tend to expect that tools are going to show more wear than keepsakes

True, Lance, but some of the 'tools' are incredible items, just because of their lifetime of press experience:

[Runscott]

Was that scan big enough for you?

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Runscott

True, Lance, but some of the 'tools' are incredible...

Hey now, let's not get into personal judgements

And yes, that Wheat photo is incredible. Very nice!

[Runscott]

Rhys recently auctioned a very similar one of Alexander - same mounting, stamps, writing, enhancements on the front. Makes me wonder how many more of these there are? What a set it would make to have 5-10 star players.

[thecatspajamas]

So do you think they were produced as "Cabinets" by Conlon and then used for publication, or were they mounted for some reason in the process of being used for publication? (My guess would be the former, given the stamping is on the back of the mount, not on a photo that was then mounted, but not having handled very many cabinets, thought I would throw the question out there).

Also interesting (to me at least) is that this particular image does not appear to be represented among the Conlon Archive negatives that The Sporting News purchased from Conlon. At least, it's not among those presented on the website that Rogers had made for the collection (and being that there are personal shots of unknown relatives of Conlon presented there, I kind of doubt they would have held back an image of a known player). Makes me wonder how many of Conlon's negatives were lost, stolen, sold, given away, or otherwise removed from the archive over the years before Rogers bought them.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

So do you think they were produced as "Cabinets" by Conlon and then used for publication, or were they mounted for some reason in the process of being used for publication? (My guess would be the former, given the stamping is on the back of the mount, not on a photo that was then mounted, but not having handled very many cabinets, thought I would throw the question out there).

I don't know - the Conlon stamp on the back initially confused me, because I wouldn't expect him to glue a print to a mount.

One of many possible scenarios: Conlon stamped the original print (or wrote his notes and name on it) and then sent the photo to a news agency. The news agency mounted it for ease of marking up, covering the original Conlon stamp (or notes), then returned to Conlon. Conlon put his stamp on the back and it later ended up with 'the Sporting News'.

[drcy]

I've seen old cardboard mounted news photos before. Rare and not sure why they did it, but I've seen them before. If Conlon's stamp is on back, I assume he did it.

[billyb]

An auction house told me of coming across photos that have a tissue attached to the top of the photo, and drapes over the photo for protection?? It seems to me the tissue is in the way, even if it is rolled back, it still may be in the way when framing said photo.
Have you come across any photos with the attached tissue, if so how did you handle them? At any time, do you decide to remove the tissue??? I guess we can call this the tissue issue.
sorry to jump in so late, but this kind of like the editors marks, to remove or not to remove. A residue of old glue will be at top front border if removed. So should that be mentioned or noted when selling that photo.