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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Cabinet cards, CDVS, and Tintypes

       I have such a hoarding tendency when it comes to old images. I absolutely love collecting cabinet cards and any abandoned tintype I can find.  I try to go to swap meets as often as possible and anytime I see a poor tintype baking in the hot sun I must own it. I do not know why the vendors insist on having their images in direct sun! Drives me absolutely nuts! Below I have scanned some of my favorite images. I have also included the back designs of some of the cards and one even includes a tax stamp.



Saved this image from the sun. They have faint pink cheeks that were hand colored.

    Love this image for the joy of the flowers. I wonder if this was a possible trades photograph, but then again so many woman did not have a job outside their home. Who knows she could have been a socialite with a massive garden. The funnest part of all of these images is imagining the life of the person.

Here eyes are huge and lovely.

    The back of this card has the stamp tax.  The US Government imposed a stamp revenue tax in order to raise money for the Civil War. The original tax was imposed in 1862 on telegrams playing cards and other luxury goods. As the way continued more funds were needed and in 1864 the government passed a tax on all ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, and photographs. The photographer was actually responsible for collecting the tax and showed its proof by placing a stamp on the back of the plate or photograph and dating it. Some photographers were fancy and used certain rubber stamps. The green Washington stamp found on some images was a 3 cent stamp and the blue stamp pictures below was a 2 cent stamp. This is the only tax revenue photograph in my collection and I am so thrilled to have found it! For my photographs I have recently purchased a collection of old stamps and plan on adding the stamps to the back of my plates for my clients.

3 cent stamp for Revenue Tax of 1864


    The embossing on this photograph and the mustache are so cool. I wonder if this images was taken with a camera with nine lenses to produce a gemtype.


  You can see the back of some of the cards. There are other cards I own just because of the back logo design of the photographer. In the middle you can see the George Washington stamp symbolizing the revenue tax. The image on the left is the back of the mustache embossed photo above and the one on the right is of the lady with the large eyes. 

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