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Originally Posted by prewarsports
I thought it had to be within 2 years (1 year 364 days or less). I did not realize it was 2 calendar years.
Here is an example, slightly extreme but it applies nonetheless.
Charles Conlon is in his studio and he produces 2 Cobb images from the original Negative in late December 1911. They are being sent to two different publications. He sends one to the New York Times and they get it and date stamp it December 31, 1911. He sends the other one to Maine (a little further away) and they dont get it until Jan 1, 1912 and stamp the file date on it. The New York Times example is a Type 1 worth $50,000. The other one can not be a type 1 because it is more than 2 years from the 1909 date. It MUST be labeled a Type 2 by PSA right? By the rigid standards of some collectors, this is worth significantly less money because it is a Type 2.
Before you laugh, some collectors ARE that stupid and wont want the latter example because it is a type 2 and PSA says it is inferior to a one day older example. This is just an attempt to standardize the hobby of photos and make money off of it. I have no problem with calling a photo "vintage" or "Not Vintage" and coming up with a general standard, but producing any type of rigid rules for a non-rigid collectible to me is arbitrary at best.
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The thing is..........I don't think the actual standards they use are that rigid. It's more of a roundabout thing.
Common sense dictates it should still be classified a Type I. Date stamps on press photos should not be the end all be all, especially taking into consideration how haphazardly they were used.
Often they aren't ever stamped with a date.......the tag will be missing, etc... Some photos are often used over and over and have an ascending series of dates on them. On photos when the date was only on the tag, the earliest stamp might be later then when the photo was actually produced because the tag is missing or was removed.
Some collectors will have a "just to be safe" attitude and might pass on a photo THEY consider Type II. Maybe they will pay a bit more just to have all the markings THEY are looking for on a vintage photo. That's just they way it is.
Still IMO Press/Wire/etc.. photos are fairly easy to classify for the most part. I still take issue when they decide to classify studio photos (Conlon's, Burke's, etc..) in the same way.
I don't see how they could possibly take a press photo from the original negative with a date stamp 3 years after a photo was taken and classify it as a Type II photo and then decide ANY George Burke photo is definitively a Type I photo knowing he ran a business making prints of his photos years after he actually took the photo.
I realize some stampings may put them in a certain time span............but really, is there any way of knowing he pumped a print out anywhere near the given time span for their designations?