Babe Ruth glass plate negative

[D. Bergin]

Basically a photo of a photo.

2"x3" is a really small glass negative. Are you sure it's glass, and not acetate?

Either way, the smaller glass sizes tended to fall closer to the end of the glass negative era, somewhere in the 1930's or so.

If it can be definitively pinpointed as an early artwork stage to a specific product, publication or even card, you might have something there.

If it's just a random file copy with no idea as to it's purpose, it's a nice little collectible, though likely not worth a lot.

However if you somehow have convincing provenance tracing it back to the American Caramel Company, it would likely be worth thousands.

As far as reprinting possibilities, without even going into areas such as copyright and image likeness issues...I don't think there's any real potential market to be honest. There's already hundreds, if not thousands of crystal clear Babe Ruth shots available in some way shape or form to the general public. This is essentially a tiny 2nd generation neg that is likely not going to blow up very well. Probably served it's purpose for whatever it was originally used for, but not exactly great for art prints.

I've got an old metal file drawer full of maybe 1500+ old copy negs from boxing magazine publisher Stanley Weston. I've scanned several, and while they're likely just fine for inserting small printed photographs into articles in B&W newsprint boxing magazines of the era, they likely wouldn't serve much purpose beyond that.