BABE RUTH WIRE PHOTO

CARDSANDCOINS

IS IT TYPE #1
THANX FOR YOUR HELP
TIM

Stone193

Hiya Tim

Not my area but how do you know that's a "wire" photo?

Most wire photos have typed narrative and says "wire photo" in the writing.

How you can tell for sure? Get a 10X loupe and look edge of his jersey e.g. If it's a wire photo, the line will not be smooth but jagged edged.

E.g. from my file of a wire photo:

(note the jagged edge)

I believe your photo is most likely a News Service Photo; Acme and Associated Press were a couple of biggies during that era. The problem is that they're developed and then sent via mail e.g. to smaller news papers that didn't have their own photographers/reporters in the field.

Thus the wire photo became super popular since they were electronically transferred like fax to the local papers.

Wasn't too hard to check which game this was since it was his "first" HR of the season and I had the score and who they were playing:

and...Gehrig did follow Ruth in the SLU that day:

Unfortunately there's no date on the photo - this would have to be determined by an expert on photos like Henry Yee.

My take? The narrative talks of his first HR of the season - and based on the picture? I'd say it's most likely contemporaneous - thus that would make it a TYPE I photo. Again, I don't think this is a wire photo.

Now, if it's a wire photo? What you would want to pay for it would drop by a lot since tons of these were printed vs the development of a news service photo IMO.

Now, having said all this? I have no idea how much of this is gospel. It's pretty much from memory and my opinion.