It's similar to Morris Fuller Benton's Stymie Obelisk, but it's not exactly: the flyer says 1894, and ATF didn't release Stymie Obelisk until 1931 or so.

Hmm...not similar enough. Thanks for your answer, though.

Very nice find, Don. One of the many variations on Clarendon back then?

Digitally, see Clarendon Condensed and Clarendon Extra Condensed for similars only.

Thanks, Don and Mike. There are little differences between the sample and the specimen, which make me wonder whether foundries provided the metal or something else. Maybe improvements or changes were made after the specimens were published. What explains the differences?

Mike, not really a Clarendon, more like an emaciated version of the slab serif that we now label as Egyptian but was labelled as Antique in the 19th century.
Stinkyfoot, Marder developed this font but others would have copied it by a process known as electrotyping and sold it as their own. A physical process similar to the electronic ones now used for stealing digital fonts and selling the clones. Font forgery was thriving then as now.
As for the variation in the g, as I mentioned in my post this is most likely due to the fact that Marder almost certainly still cut the different font sizes by hand in 1887.
Identity between different font sizes became possible with invention of the font pantograph by Linn Boyd Benton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linn_Boyd_Benton which gave his company, which went on to be part of the core of ATF an edge over competitors like Marder which did not adopt the machine until a few years later.
BTW this is not to say that Marder felt at some stage that the g was sufficiently off that it should be recut. Or someone tinkered with their stolen version.
Don

Ugh, you did explain that, I see. Thanks for the explanation. Interesting history.

Skeleton Antique was reproduced as MVB Peccadillo. See http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mvbfonts/mvb-peccadillo/.

Good find! I see Holly Goldsmith based the digital font on "letterpress-printed specimens of 96-point, antique metal type." That's a really big poster size version. Note the respect the digital font shows to the differences of details between sizes in the original. For example, note the changes in the ear of the _g_. The size I posted, at 42 point, would fit between her 24 and 96.
Don

Popular metal types were often recut by woodtype foundries. Marder's Skeleton Antique No. 2 received this treatment. The result is included in Flat-it's digital Dharma and Rama Slab families http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/flat-it/dharma-slab/ http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/flat-it/rama-slab/ Stroke widths, serif thicknesses and distances are more regularized than the MVB interpretation, but the condensed versions of Dharma and Rama Slab are very similar to Skeleton Antique No. 2. Dharma Slab has seven weights. Rama Slab has six weights. Could be tinkered with to make different weights of Skeleton Antique No. 2.
Don

Thanks, Don! Rama Slab will work for me, and I found a seller that Flat-It, the maker of Rama Slab, links to that offers an unlimited-page-views license for Rama Slab. How did you find these two families?

I had seen them before & they stuck in my memory. Both are well made fonts by the excellent font maker Ryoichi Tsunekawa.
Don