1947-1966 Exhibit Cards - Differences

[STL1944]

I just bought a group of 1947-66 Exhibit cards of Stan Musial (kneeling). In looking at the cards, the bottom border seems to vary across the cards (see photo below). As you can see it runs from no border through a solid black line.

I did a quick Google search and could not find a lot about it. Are these done from different print runs through the years? Any way to tell which one is earlier vs. later? Are the different types collected as different variations?

Thanks!

[swarmee]

Looks like just different levels of exposure during the printing process. There are some others that are similar, but I don't know that anyone collects them as such.
There are counterfeits of these sets, but normally they have a white or gray back, not the cream the originals were printed with. Counterfeit exhibits are also usually zoomed in from the original photo.

Here are six Del Ennis cards which show a difference in top/bottom border shading.
https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/...d/COMC/G-VG-EX

I've only really seen value differences for the true variation cards, like different poses, teams, logo airbrushed out, etc.

[JollyElm]

I can quickly see another clue, too. The cropping is slightly different as well. Focus on the top of the middle bat, and see how far away it is from the border. The card at right has a much larger amount of space there, while the card on the left has a smaller amount, and the two in the middle have virtually no space there.

[G1911]

As I understand it from my Exhibita cards and their slight cropping differences, the cropping difference between cards is due to cards being off center. With no borders in an era where cutting was less exactly precise, I think the images on the sheet were slightly larger than the card size, so that the cropping looks a little different from card to card.

[Exhibitman]

A guy like Musial had his card printed in multiple years. ESCO made a new run of cards every year but often reused artwork. So if a guy was there throughout the fifties and was good, he was in ten different print runs, at least. Depending on the year, the cutting and cropping varied slightly. if it really varied, the cards would be recognized as variations. The Jeff Heath, for example, has a really big variation:



Others are more subtle and the older catalogs did not reference them:



The Musial with the shade is a legitimate variation. Off the top of my head, Lemon has the same thing.

Even Paige has a variation:



My guess is they lopped off the bottom to get rid of the "An Exhibit Card" and ran it again.

[metroac]

I've been obsessing over the image of the two Paige cards. I thought I'd tracked down all the similar variations and, lo and behold, this one appears. I understand that Adam has seen only the image of the Paige card without the "An Exhibit Card " legend, but not the card itself. I started an offline correspondence with two other net54 members. (Let's call them "Fred" and "Robin.") Excuse the lengthy post, but I think it covers our conversations and might be of general interest. I think I'll take a closer look at any Paige Exhibit I see, but I'm not adding the "w/o AEC" card to my want list just yet.

Mark to Fred:
I saw this image on net54. It shows two versions of the Satchel Paige Exhibit card - with and without the "An Exhibit Card" legend. I'm skeptical about the "without" version and I'd speculate that either a card was scanned and the image cropped, or it's an image of a trimmed card. What do you think? Do two versions exist?

Fred to Mark:
Adam Warshaw posted this on Net 54 a few years back. He told me he has not seen the card -- just a photo. But he made a few good points.

The card w/o the An Exhibit Card appears to be a bigger "projection" like a few other Exhibits we have seen.

If it was just cropping or say someone cut off the bottom of the card with the words and the card was the same size as normal his head would be farther from the top of the card if you get my drift, but it isn't.

Seems strange only this one has been seen. But to my eyes it is legit. Your thoughts after this info?

Mark to Fred:
It looks to me like the top of his head is in the same position (relative to the top of the card) in both images.

The signed image on the right does seem to be slightly larger than the one on the left, but I believe this could be the result of blowing up the image of a trimmed card to match the size of an untrimmed one [or just resizing a cropped image to match an uncropped one.] If the size of a trimmed card [or cropped image] was adjusted to 103% or 104% to match the size of an untrimmed card, I think it would look like the one on the right.

Someone who is really slick with Photoshop could probably recreate the above scenario: 1) Crop the scan of an "An Exhibit Card" Paige to remove the legend. 2) Adjust the size of the cropped image to match the uncropped one, and 3) See what you get.

I think either the card or image has been trimmed to remove the legend. It's hard to imagine a unique Exhibit card, a "one of one." (Although your Bednarik checklist might, in fact, prove that it's not impossible.)

Fred to Mark:
Could be like you say about photo shop

You may have missed my point about location of his head. If the image was moved down [by ESCO] on the same sized card to cut off his shoe and part of his sock above the shoe like on the card in question, his head would also be lower which it is not. [i.e. There’d be space between his cap and the top of the card.] Guess it could be enlarged as you suggest.

Mark to Robin:
The attached image shows two versions of the Satchel Paige Exhibit card, one with the "An Exhibit Card" legend and one without it. There are no other images of a Paige card without the legend, so this card could be unique if it's legit.

Fred and I were kicking this around yesterday, discussing whether the signed card had been trimmed or whether the image had been cropped and (possibly) resized to match the one next to it.

Fred is somewhat more inclined to believe that a legitimate variation might exist, but I think it's more likely that either the card or the image has been trimmed. There was some variation in top-to-bottom centering in Exhibit cards, and if the "An Exhibit Card" legend was very close to the bottom border, it wouldn’t take much trimming of either the physical card or the scanned image to produce something that looked like the image on the right. (Am I coherent?)

At any rate, if this piques your interest at all, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Robin to Mark:
Since you sent it as one connected image that was obviously two separate images at one time, my best guess is that one image was resized when it was pasted in beside the other image. I use IrfanView a lot and it allows you to paste images side by side but it resizes the second one to fit the DPI and height of the first image. It looks to me like that is what happened here. Unless you have both images in separate files, that’s about the best I can give you on this one. The cards may actually be the same size or they may not but we aren’t going to know from this combined image.

[Exhibitman]

I think you're onto something there. Assuming the card was trimmed at the bottom, then if the two scans are equalized across, the trim would show. I never thought to do that before, so I did it now with a photo program:



Looks like the unicorn was a trimmed card. I learn something new every day.

[whiteymet]

Looks good to this "Fred"

I am not computer literate enough to figure out the photshop stuff. Glad you guys can.

Happy too to be able to take this off my wantlist!!

[tschock]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Looks like just different levels of exposure during the printing process. There are some others that are similar, but I don't know that anyone collects them as such.
There are counterfeits of these sets, but normally they have a white or gray back, not the cream the originals were printed with. Counterfeit exhibits are also usually zoomed in from the original photo.

Here are six Del Ennis cards which show a difference in top/bottom border shading.
https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/...d/COMC/G-VG-EX

I've only really seen value differences for the true variation cards, like different poses, teams, logo airbrushed out, etc.

FWIW, I have the following as well with 'burnt bottoms', to one extent or another.

Roy Campanella
Chico Carrasquel (Leaping)
Walter Dropo
Vic Raschi
Henry Sauer
Warren Spahn (“B” on cap)
Vic Wertz (Batting)