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Beech Nut Panorama
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Magazine Advertisement • Beech-Nut Co. • Canajoharie, New York • 8.5″ x 11″ • c.1940
Arrowhead Monk
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Citrus Label • Schmidt Litho • San Francisco • for Gold Buckle Assn. • 11″ x 11″ • c.1930
American Seal Cigar
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Cigar Box Label • for American Seal Cigar • Havana • 7″ x 5″ • c.1880
Advertisers Walking Contest
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Advertising Trade Card • Donaldson Bros. Litho • New York City • for Gold Coin Tobacco • 5″ x 3″ • c.1885
Window Dressing Portland
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Portland, Oregon. Who’d a’thunk it! The time was the fabulous fifties, and Portland’s downtown department store windows were decked out to resemble and promote everything Parisian. The photographer was Fred…
Hurdy-Gurdy Babe Ruth
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Hurdy-gurdy man Babe Ruth stands boldly in profile in this 1922 pre-season New York Yankees photograph. Half the team is wearing the white hats of the 1921 season, as they…
The Rucker Archive Shop
Fire Wagon Flying at Full Speed
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What is more exciting in a photograph than action? Especially action caught at an instant in time where all things are clear and in their place, forming a cohesive composition. …
Hy Myers Home Run
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It’s October 9th, 1916, in Fenway Park, Boston. The ball has just left the bat of Brooklyn’s Hy Myers, who knew, immediately at that moment, that he had an extra…
Sam’s Unsettling Cigar Box Label
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At first glance, this lithographic label printed for use on the outside of a wooden cigar box is fairly typical of graphic appeals by cigar companies in this c.1890 Victorian…
Rochester House of Refuge
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In 1875 the Civil War was still playing out in an enormous orphanage and reformatory in Rochester, New York. The House of Refuge was home to thousands of boys left…
Choir of Girls in Butte, Montana
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Butte, Montana had more money than God in between the 1880s and 1920s. Home of the largest copper mines in North America and the richest and most powerful people in…
Jimmy Dykes
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This is a Wide World Agency photograph from August 12, 1939. Let me quote from the paper caption on the back: “Detroit Tigers got a kick out of this. When…
SWITCH – Mickey Mantle Bats Both Ways
The Dust Bowl – Old and New?
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A few years after the worst period of the United States dust bowl, a person named Schandel in Selden, Kansas sent this postcard over to Hays where T.M. Tilloson lived. …
Ancient Marquilla From Cuba
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A marquilla is a cigarette wrapper, which we today would call a soft pack. it was small, quite small in fact, designed to hold small cigarettes, each being about two…
Nebraska Indians Baseball Team
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Cabinet photograph 1885
Contest First and Second Nine W.B.B.C
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It was a set up. The photographer set it up. They were all posing. Because of the nature of the camera and its shutter speed, in order to record outdoor…
1920s Life in Paris
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This is a magazine cover that made me melt. After that, it made me ask – Is this what life was like in Paris in the ’20s? Cupid would shoot…
Tower Of Babel Game – A Victorian Marvel
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I’ve always liked Ziggurats. They turn up in various architecture books, and in illustrations hither and yon. A ziggurat, simply, is a spiral tower or a pyramid with a spiral…
Old West Stage Show Photo Postcard
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The cowgirls are pretty, the cowboys good looking, but who is that hideous minstrel figure in the background? This rather mysterious real photo postcard seems to be a photo from…
The William T. Coleman Story – 1880s British Columbia Promotions
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In 1884 William T. Coleman officially became a megalomaniac. That was the year that he hired Forbes Litho Company in Boston to produce for him a thirty-page, 10″ X 14,”…
Anatomical Eyeglasses Fit The Earth
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Imagination is a wonderful thing. And when lithographic artists were let loose on an ad campaign back in Victorian days, the images they produced would often be imaginative. With an…
Billiken Poster
Baseball Cartes by Mark Rucker
Ojibwa Indian Tobacco Progressive Label & Proofs (article)
The Lithography Printing Process Illustrated Surprises are common in the world of antique printing. The companies were numerous, their products diverse, and their work broad ranging, with subject matter covering…
Ambrotype of a Cowboy from the Early 1860s
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When I first laid eyes on this image I was stunned. This is impossible, I said to the computer screen. Tom Cruise in the 1860s? – dressed as a cowboy?…
A Boy’s Baseball Fantasy
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There is nothing predictable about the antique business. If it does not surprise you, you aren’t paying attention. It’s true in every field, and it’s true with early baseball photography.…
Baseball Archeology In Cuba: A Trip to Guines
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Visiting Cuba is like tripping in a time machine. We’re not talking about a beach vacation at Veradero, but a visitation to the living, working Cuba. A Cuba, where baseball…
Catch the Express Train! – A Great Tobacco Label
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Those artists at Clay & Cossack in Buffalo sure did love color. They pushed the color limit both in intensity and with the use of unusual color combinations. At the…
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