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HankronFor trading card collectors, if you find an 1800s cabinet card of King Kelly or the Colombia football team, the photography studio stamped into the mount is not the name of trading card company, but a local photography studio. A local studio much like the one where you got you wedding or graduation photo. These studios took photographs for what they were paid for and none photographed only baseball.
The most celebrated and expensive 19th century baseball photographer was Joseph Hall. But if you looked at Hall’s Tuesday 1887 calandar it might look like the following:
10 am: Photoraph the New York Giants team for Goodwin & Company. They say they want them to make some sort of cigarette card
11:30 Photograph the Jones and their new baby
12: Photograph the Mayor
1:30 Photograph Mrs. Williamson and her cats
Even in their day, some of the photographers would have been well known and highly regarded: whether due to the skill of the photography and overall efficiency (Just try photographing the entire Giants team, especially if they’ve come from the corner bar). The fact that Hall made photographs for Goodwin Company and also made those team cabinets, says that he was highly thought of in baseball circles. If you discover that BJ Falk made cabinets of Senators and famous actresses and for the Newsboy Cabinets, this says he would have been well known even in his day. It only makes sense that President Lincoln or J.P, Morgan would only go to a top notch studio. So the reoccurance of a studio’s name with Presidents or baseball stars is important with today’s collectors
For baseball cabinets, most studio names stamped onto the front make no difference in the price. A handful will add a premium, small to larger. J. Wood or or Elmer Chickering will likely add a bit of a premium. Joseph Hall, in part because he is very rare, will give a large premium in value.
A few of these studios tried to sell their photos directly to the public, whether through their own gallery, at shows or through others. If you lived in mid 1800s New York, you could have stopped by Mathew Brady’s gallery and bought yourself a photo of Abraham Lincoln. Simularly, Carl Horner sold to the general public some of his cabinets of baseball teams or players. The vast majority of cabinets, however, should be considered distinct to trading cards, both in nature and pricing. Trying to fit a 1877 Boston Bostons cabint into your trading card registry because it would count as a rookie card, doesn't work even if PSA allows it. It would be similar to saying that that 1951 AP wirephoto of Mickey Mantle should count as his rookie card. A rookie year Mantle wirephoto is a fine and desirabl item, but it ain't a baseball card. For the vast majority of cabinet cards or CDVs (small version of the cabinet card) or baseball stars, it will be impossible to tell if it was distributed commercially even if it was.
Also, note that cabinet cards were around a long time before the N172 Old Judges, Newsboys etc. It’s just that the tobacco companies decided that ‘Hey, these cabinets would be neat to promote our cigarettes. Let’s hire a studio and make some of baseball players and actresses.” So, the commercial cabinets like the N172 are just a small portion of the cabinets out there, and most cabinets were not commercial devices.
02-14-2004, 12:08 AM
What are Studio Cabinets?
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