New here, please pardon what's surely a stupid question…   

The photo displays lettering on pieces of baseball memorabilia allegedly from 1910. 

It looks to our untrained eyes to be of more modern origin. 

Is it just Times New Roman?  If so, how old is that font? 

If it's something else, can you identify it and tell us how old it could be? 

 

It’s not Times New Roman.

It looks like it could be a display cut of Caslon, which means it could easily be older than 1910.

I was thinking a cut of Bodoni;  Baur Bodoni by Bitstream is close but no cigar. 

1 hour ago, Greg Yerbury said:

a cut of Bodoni

I don’t think so: the |a| especially is very much Caslon (and the |e| at least isn’t like Bodoni at all). See, For example:

download at MyFonts

Different styles of Caslon have a |g| more similar to the one in the sample image, but in general the digital offerings seem to have “normalised” the quirkier letters (like |s|). Which makes me think that, even if it’s something made after 1910, it wasn’t made with a digital font.

Absolutely Caslon without a doubt, trouble is which version, so many different foundries with so many slight variants over the decades (thats not a font it's a period of time!)

 

3 hours ago, Gecko said:

decades (thats not a font it's a period of time!)

Well... Decade 3D, Decade Nouveau... 😉

3 hours ago, Riccardo Sartori said:

Well... Decade 3D, Decade Nouveau... 😉

ahahah now we're all getting funny!

Must be spring.

Caslon Old Face by Bitstream is very close indeed for the lower case but there are clear differences with the upper case. 

Greg you'll find the "f" in hofman is different. Keep searching in Caslon!

 

Much appreciated, all the responses so far.  Delighted there have been so many!  Please keep at it, we'd be chuffed to get a precise ID on the thing... 

 

Well it looks like it could be something like re-cut Caslon by American Type founders it has an alt f like the one in the example.
https://archive.org/details/1923AmericanTypeFoundersSpecimenBookCatalogue/page/n183