Relatives or Coincidence?

Here are three more post cards from Pikes Peak in Colorado.

One can easily conclude from looking at the fronts of these three post cards that they are related – either all were printed by the same printer and sold to different publishers or, perhaps, a publisher “borrowed” the picture for its own use (a common practice in those days). But, one can certainly believe that these three cards are related to each other based on the fronts.

They are definitely all the same picture. They all have the same caption in the bottom right of the post card: “8408. Snow Drifts on Pike’s Peak Cog Road, Colo.” The captions are all in the same font. The only difference on the fronts of these cards is that the third card has a white border. That puts the top two cards in the Divided Back Era (1907-1915) and the bottom card in the White Border Era (1915-1930).

When we turn the post cards over and carefully examine the backs,

we can potentially draw the same conclusion as we do by looking at the fronts of these cards: that maybe they are inter-related.
The top two cards share the same fancy script and decorations around the words Post Card. The bottom two cards share the exact same wording describing the fronts of the post cards.

Here is my unscientific conclusion:
We learned in the last blog that the H.H. Tammen Company evolved between 1896 and 1953. Perhaps we are looking at some of the evolution right here on these three cards. The H.H. Tammen Company owned the picture. The post cards of this picture were might popular and worth reprinting several times. The first printing was simply the post card with the caption on the front and the reminder on the back that “This space can be used for a written message, using one-cent stamp”. The second printing included a longer description of the front of the card – a development in the history of picture post cards. The third printing included the name of the company and its cute “alien” mascot.