Boy with a dark-covered table
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This little carte de visite image comes with no information. His face and hair look oddly modern to me, and while I can’t quite be sure, he looks like he’s holding something in his left hand. When I first glanced at this picture, I thought, “He looks like a magician”. The more I looked at it, of course, the less I thought that. But when I went to buy it, the seller looked at it and said, “He looks like a magician.”
Pics of Then 
His hands look dirty or sooty to me. Judging by the mount, the carte is fairly early, maybe mid-1860s. The decorative border might help to date it.
Yes, I agree, everything about it points towards it being an early photo. And the sootiness of his hands is probably from the flash powder used in his magic act. š
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