MacIntire Cabinets

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Posted By: Rich Jacobs 

I recently bought an 1888 MacIntire cabinet card of Harry Wright from Terry Knouse. MacIntire was a local Philadelphia photographer, and Wright was then the manager of the Philadelphia team.

I've only seen one other MacIntire--another Harry Wright but in a slightly different pose. Does anyone have any MacIntires of other players, or has anyone seen others?

In response to Bob Lemke's invitation below, I emailed him and asked whether MacIntires would be included in a future edition. He responded that they would not be, since there were tens--if not hundreds--of local photographers who had done baseball cabinets of perhaps one or two players, many of them would be unique, and they thus didn't warrant the space for listing.

Is anyone aware of any effort to catalogue these smaller cabinet productions?

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Posted By: Hankron

I'm currently working on a large project that includes a directory of prominent photographers. The directory will include bios, subjects and types of photographs, how to identify and authenticate (stampls, etc), etc. I plan on releasing the project as a whole when it's finished, rather than bit by bit.

I can, however, tell you that MacIntire was a significant photographer and more. Interestingly, he specialized in fine art subjects and not baseball players.

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Posted By: runscott

Rich - Jimmy and I had discussed creating a database to catalog existing pre-1900 cabinets and cdvs of professional players/teams that aren't in Lemke's "Standard Catalog". This never got off the ground, but we planned to attack it by dividing up auction catalogs.

If enough of us got involved we could do it, but it would involve first coming up with a list of "attributes" we want to record for each item, and then finding a suitable database and interface to use.

Examples:

Date (or approx.) of issue
size
team/player
[publisher]
[photographer]
image
auction 1 (name/date)
price 1
condition 1
auction 2 (name/date)
price 2
condition 2
auction 3 (name/date)
price 3
condition 3
Number of existing copies
Notes (owners?,history,etc.)

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Posted By: Rich Jacobs

Scott: When I emailed Lemke, he suggested that a search of auction catalogues would be the right way to start, and that's what he did when he was doing his research on Old Judge cabinets.

I'd be willing to pitch in some time on a project like that. Gotta know that overall, however, it would be a boatload of work.

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Posted By: Hankron

I think Scott & Jimmy's project would be a worthwhile project. My opinion is that a big database is not neccesary, in part as true populations will never be identified and pop reports would be deceptive and misued. As there will neccesarilly be great gaps in information and pricing, subjective opinion and brief summaries are neccesary.

My feeling is that there should be a listing of known 19th century Major League Baseball photographers. Each listing would consist of a brief overview of his photos that are known to exist. This includes subject, type, era, etc. A commemnt on known rarity, pricing, etc is fine. Obviously, some photographer's listings would be brief as perhaps only one known photo of his is known.

When most collectors find a photographer's stamp on the back of the photo, they simply want to know if anyone has heard of him and if he well known. When I tell a collector that George Burke was the official photographer for the Chicago Cubs and many of his images were used to make the Goudey cards, the collector will say, "That's good to know, I'm glad I asked."

Sometimes, they simply want to hear, "Yeah, I've heard of him before. He's well known amongst collectors. It will give a premium in price to have his stamp on back."

In short, I think a listing a known photographers is a fine idea, but I think a straight statistical database would be misleading and misread.