Original negatives- underrated? Show yours

[btcarfagno]

I have three early Babe Ruth glass plate negatives up for auction in the latest Hunt monthly auction. One is Ruth talking to a reporter on the field in uniform just before the first ever game at Yankee Stadium in 1923.

http://huntauctions.com/phone/current.cfm

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Tom C

[JoeyFarino]

Originally Posted by btcarfagno

I have three early Babe Ruth glass plate negatives up for auction in the latest Hunt monthly auction. One is Ruth talking to a reporter on the field in uniform just before the first ever game at Yankee Stadium in 1923.

http://huntauctions.com/phone/current.cfm

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Tom C

Wow! Now those are awesome!

[D. Bergin]

About $1.78 million bucks over my budget, but my first impression is that somebody got a bargain on the Conlon Collection.

[Keith_Loving]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

There was a large lot of negatives that was listed several years ago that I believe was from the estate of Jim Rowe. It might have had a complete listing, but I can't recall. You've got my curiosity up now though as I hadn't considered that before.

Other than that, there are the one-sheet "catalogs" that Burke produced, but which only cover his years of activity. I have one, and have photos of another that Ben was kind enough to provide, that list the major leaguer players and team combinations that were active and who Burke photographed. They don't cover George Brace's decades of activity though, or the minor leaguers and older "old time player" photos that they reshot and reproduced. Some of the Brace era players were listed on the bracephoto website when it was active, but not all.

Presumably (hopefully) Rogers had all of the negatives scanned before selling them, but if so, the complete "catalog" of images was never made available to the public (to my knowledge), and the archive of scans may or may not be housed on one of the hard drives that he broke back into his offices to retrieve. I'm not sure if those hard drives were ever produced during the trials, or what their status is now. I'm sure that whoever wins the Conlon collection would love to not have to re-scan all of those negatives!

Hi,

I also have an original Burke Checklist. My checklist is numbered from 1 - 825. I am not sure how old this one is, but my guess would be prior to 1936. I say that because a player that I was hoping would be listed on this list isn't on the list and his first Burke photo was in 1936 when he played for the Columbus Red Birds and St. Louis Cardinals.

I would be interested in knowing how high the numbers go on yours and Ben's checklists. I'd be interested in possibly trading for a more recent checklist if it has the name of the particular player that I desire to have on the list.

If there is a need, I do have my checklist scanned...

[thecatspajamas]

PM sent. The catalog list that I have is dated August 1940. The one Ben had (has?) notes that it is a "Supplement to List of August, 1940" at the top. Both of these lists are of Major League players (American and National Leagues), though if your guy played in the minors and went on to play in the majors, he likely would have kept the same catalog identification number in Burke's archive. I also have a kind of running compilation of catalog numbers not represented in these catalogs that I have accumulated over time, if you would like me to take a look. The highest ID number I have recorded is Herman Besse at 6054, but I do not know if that is the end of the catalog. Burke did have separate catalog lists for "old time" (pre-1929) players, players in civvies, and minor league players, but I have never run across any of these, and only have numbers from these based on the scattered physical prints I have run across (if anyone has one of these other catalogs, or has scans of one available, please let me know).

[TCMA]

Just going through some of my father's collection today and came across a box full of dozens of original negatives from what looks like mostly the 40's. Majority of negs were the Newark Bears and definitely shot by an amateur photographer. Took some really quick snaps so I could share some. Several more major leaguers in the box too:

Babe Ruth:


Lou Gehrig:


Yogi Berra (Newark Bears):


Pee Wee Reese:


Luke Appling:

[GKreindler]

LOVE that Berra shot - he looks like such a kid!!

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by GKreindler

LOVE that Berra shot - he looks like such a kid!!

LOL! I was thinking he looks like the oldest, smallest minor leaguer I've ever seen in my life.

I also love the shot.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by GKreindler

LOVE that Berra shot - he looks like such a kid!!

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I also love the shot.

Funny thing was, at the time I found these I was searching our collection for negatives from our local minor league team from the 40's, known as the Peekskill Highlanders. Pulling a Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, "Larry" Berra, and other major leaguers from the same box caught me completely off guard.

[rjackson44]

very cool

[GoCubsGo32]

Originally Posted by TCMA

Just going through some of my father's collection today and came across a box full of dozens of original negatives from what looks like mostly the 40's. Majority of negs were the Newark Bears and definitely shot by an amateur photographer. Took some really quick snaps so I could share some. Several more major leaguers in the box too:

Babe Ruth:


Lou Gehrig:


Yogi Berra (Newark Bears):


Pee Wee Reese:


Luke Appling:

Whoa! Cool! I've actually seen those snapshots over the past year or so...and I may have one of them in my collection.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by GoCubsGo32

Whoa! Cool! I've actually seen those snapshots over the past year or so...and I may have one of them in my collection.

Are you saying you have seen these images before? I don't know how that would be possible .

[GoCubsGo32]

That is correct. I know I've seen the Pee Wee on eBay in a Dodgers lot and the Lou I think I can pin point as well. I'll see if I can find them.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by GoCubsGo32

That is correct. I know I've seen the Pee Wee on eBay in a Dodgers lot and the Lou I think I can pin point as well. I'll see if I can find them.

Hmm, very interesting. Definitely let me know if you find something.

[Joe_G.]

My collecting focus is narrow with a focus on 19th century Detroit items which can be tough to come by so I take interest in anything that might surface, negatives or otherwise. I have a 1888 game in process negative, Detroit vs Philadelphia in Philly, and several Old Judge glass plate negatives. I've written about them HERE, the thread includes several scans.

[TCMA]

Originally Posted by GoCubsGo32

That is correct. I know I've seen the Pee Wee on eBay in a Dodgers lot and the Lou I think I can pin point as well. I'll see if I can find them.

Well, Gary is 100% correct. Not only has he seen the Gehrig... there's an original photo from my negative up for auction right now! What are the chances I'd find this neg last week and here is a print currently at auction? Makes we wonder who the photog was:

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/c...umbnail-071515

[Chris Counts]

A few years back, I bought a batch of Reds' negatives from the 1939-40 era off eBay. A couple weeks later, I noticed they were smoking (no joke!). Soon, they had melted into a puddle of goo. I was never very good at chemistry, but I figured some kind of chemical reaction was going on. At this point, I decided to give up collecting negatives, but I did get a couple nice prints made from them before they self-destructed.

[horzverti]

Originally Posted by Chris Counts

A few years back, I bought a batch of Reds' negatives from the 1939-40 era off eBay. A couple weeks later, I noticed they were smoking (no joke!). Soon, they had melted into a puddle of goo. I was never very good at chemistry, but I figured some kind of chemical reaction was going on. At this point, I decided to give up collecting negatives, but I did get a couple nice prints made from them before they self-destructed.

Chris, that is a terrible that your negs were destroyed. Sorry to read that. May I ask how you had stored the negatives? Were they in individual sleeves? If so, what material were the sleeves made of?

[Keith_Loving]

You need to be careful to avoid high heat. Don't store them in an attic where the temps can get really hot and partly melt and warp the negatives. I have a hard time believing they were smoking, but I am no expert on this topic. Just a skeptic. Hopefully you had prints made before the negatives were toasted.

[yankeeno7]

I used to have a Ruth in a Red Sox uniform and then also had a Marilyn Monroe professional photograph (with not much clothes on).

I dont know enough about original negatives and was weary of the legitimacy of them being original so I sold them about 7-8 years ago.

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by SAllen2556

I sold all my baseball ones last year through Hunt.
This is how they degrade over time:

I bought those, most - if not all - were restored.

Brearley Collection negatives originally.

[h2oya311]

Here's a few of mine - all Burke/Brace:

1936 Walter Alston:


1967 Johnny Bench:


1961 Lou Brock:


1939 Pee Wee Reese:


1940 Phil Rizzuto:


1960 Billy Williams:


I could certainly use some help getting better digital images of the Alston, Bench, and Brock.

[mikejanesphotography]

Love seeing Johnny in a Buffalo uniform, grew up going to the new stadium. Hoping to see him in a couple weeks. What do you mean better digital?

[horzverti]

Charles Conlon negatives - here are various years of longtime St. Louis Cardinals coach Clyde "Buzzy" Wares.

[horzverti]

Awesome shots Derek. The Rizzuto and Reeses are super!

[Forever Young]

Rookie

[mikejanesphotography]

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

[horzverti]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

The Rogers' fraud story is a huge black eye on our hobby. I believe there was an ≈800 unit discrepancy between TSN's figure of 8300 Conlon negatives sold to Rogers in 2010 and the ≈7500 negs sold earlier this year as part of the liquidation of Rogers' assets. Rogers, via distributor(s), sold at least 75 individual 4 X 5 acetate negs around 2010 or 2011 if I remember correctly. I don't know if TSN's 8300 figure was a high estimate or if Rogers sold all 800. Rogers owned the Conlon negs, so I believe that he did have the legal right to sell them.

[Forever Young]

Millers

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

With regard to the Burke/Brace archives, Rogers struck a deal with Mary Brace, George Brace's daughter, to purchase the archive for an up-front lump-sum payment (sort of a down-payment) plus periodic payments to follow. Per the deal, he had the ability to sell the original negatives before all of the payments had been made. I do not know if he was supposed to return a percentage of those sales to Mary as they happened, or what the specific terms of the repayment following sales were. He was also to be scanning the originals and returning an archive of scans to Mary that could be used to continue to produce prints. From what I understand, he either did not return scans to her, or the scans he did produce were sub-par, and after the initial lump-sum payment (and possibly one or two of the periodic payments?) he failed to make the periodic payments to follow up. There was a news article that quoted Rogers lawyer talking about unanticipated difficulties they had with copyright and marketing the images, and that they might have to unwind the deal. By the time he was missing payments though, the "key" images of HOFers were long gone, and the bulk of the archive had been sold, so there really was no way to unwind the deal and return the negatives. I'm sure Mary would have much preferred to get the archive back, but by the time Rogers was missing payments, it was much too late. That there was a deal that essentially allowed Rogers to sell off the collateral before having paid for it boggles my mind, but perhaps there are nuances to the deal that I am not aware of. Whatever the case, the last I heard, Mary had joined the line of creditors and business partners suing Rogers, and nothing usable (either negatives or scans) had been returned to her.

That said, Rogers was not the only one who released Burke/Brace negatives into the collecting community. There was a large grouping of negatives (several thousand, if memory serves) that proceeded from the estate of Jim Rowe that were sold through either Mastro or Legendary (it was either one of the last Mastro auctions or one of the first Legendary auctions, can't recall offhand which). I do not know if these were ever broken up and resold, or if they remained together in some other archive. It would be difficult to discern if they did hit the market now.

There are also anecdotal accounts of Brace himself having sold or bartered negatives over the years. (One story I heard had him trading negatives for help changing a tire on his vehicle.) So all of that is to say that there were some Burke/Brace negatives on the market prior to Rogers getting them, but clearly he did the most damage in terms of breaking up the archive and scattering it to the winds. That this was done without producing a comprehensive catalog of scans for later use and reference is, to me, the biggest tragedy of the whole story.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by h2oya311

Here's a few of mine - all Burke/Brace

I could certainly use some help getting better digital images of the Alston, Bench, and Brock.

Derek,
Sweet grouping of images! I am especially fond of the minor league images of players who would go on to major league greatness. If by "getting better digital images" you mean finding a way to scan them at higher resolution than the images that were posted when you purchased them, please feel free to send me a PM for some suggestions.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

Rookie

SUPERB shots of Joe and Ted, Ben, which goes without saying but I'm saying it anyway!

[mikejanesphotography]

horzverti & cats - thanks for those responses.

Thought had read he was not supposed to sell any of the negatives for one of the archives, probably misread something, but it would be interesting to know what the agreements allowed. This would be especially true in terms of the copyrights, since he violated the agreement, if he ever had them to begin with, etc. I did not know that some had been on the market from Brace/Burke before Rodgers took the archive, explains a lot really!

Conlon is mostly together still, Brace/Burke though, you're right, it's a shame they were not scanned properly and a catalog was made before being sold! Do not see a way it could ever be done either - unless those who own Burke/Brace prints/negs scan and fans create a central website to house them, kind of put them together backwards. Expensive and massive though.


Also see who outbid me on those auctions Forever_Young!!

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Thought had read he was not supposed to sell any of the negatives for one of the archives

That may well have been the case with the Conlons. I know he had some sort of shared profit agreement with The Sporting News for the marketing of the Conlon images. That may have required him to keep the Conlon collection intact as well, but I just don't know.

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Conlon is mostly together still, Brace/Burke though, you're right, it's a shame they were not scanned properly and a catalog was made before being sold! Do not see a way it could ever be done either - unless those who own Burke/Brace prints/negs scan and fans create a central website to house them, kind of put them together backwards. Expensive and massive though.

Even with fan/collector participation, such a project would never approach replicating the original archive. Even if one could contact every collector who has a portion of the archive, there are too many with the "1/1" attitude of wanting to be the only one who has a particular image that would not participate. The early negatives are also large enough that most desktop scanners cannot accommodate them, meaning the vast majority of collectors do not have a way of scanning the negatives, even if they are inclined to contribute to such a project.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

Even with fan/collector participation, such a project would never approach replicating the original archive. Even if one could contact every collector who has a portion of the archive, there are too many with the "1/1" attitude of wanting to be the only one who has a particular image that would not participate. The early negatives are also large enough that most desktop scanners cannot accommodate them, meaning the vast majority of collectors do not have a way of scanning the negatives, even if they are inclined to contribute to such a project.

Maybe we should try anyway. Even if 1/10 were scanned, it would be great. I mean.. I will contribute my 6!

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

That may well have been the case with the Conlons. I know he had some sort of shared profit agreement with The Sporting News for the marketing of the Conlon images. That may have required him to keep the Conlon collection intact as well, but I just don't know.

Even with fan/collector participation, such a project would never approach replicating the original archive. Even if one could contact every collector who has a portion of the archive, there are too many with the "1/1" attitude of wanting to be the only one who has a particular image that would not participate. The early negatives are also large enough that most desktop scanners cannot accommodate them, meaning the vast majority of collectors do not have a way of scanning the negatives, even if they are inclined to contribute to such a project.

Conlon - could be, never did see much of a follow up on the story to know more.

Brace/Burke - definitely, that's what would make it extremely expensive. Plus you couldn't just rely on negatives but would have to scan prints as well because those negatives may be lost in private collections or just gone (or 1/1 attitude). Guess that's kind of what the LOC did with the Bain collection, they have if it was scanned from the original negative or a print since some of the negatives ended up in collections. Even with a large amount of them scanned/restored and on a site, not sure what could do with it...except list who owns the original negative, or the print that it came from, if for sale, etc. Mary Brace probably still owns the copyrights to them all is my guess.

[TCMA]

I'm currently working with an archive containing hundreds of original glass plate negatives from the 30's. You may have seen some of my posts about this but here's a sampling:

Typical neg from the archive. Leo Durocher, St. Louis Cardinals:


Professionally cleaned and restored image of Sam Leslie, NY Giants in our proposed postcard size:

[certainteed52]

Jackie Robinson 1945 original negatives.

[h2oya311]

Originally Posted by certainteed52

Jackie Robinson 1945 original negatives.

I've got a Type I photo with this same image...it's a classic shot! Nice one!

[koufax1fan]

Hello:
Can anyone tell me the value of a color Sandy Koufax negative from April 1962 at Wrigley Field.. Koufax had 18 strikeouts in this game ...

[jefferyepayne]

Only have a few:



1916 Thorpe at bat.



1925 Grange during his first pro football game.



1924 Grange at Illinois



1928 Grange with kids

jeff

[MVSNYC]

Pretty awesome thread. What struck me, was that Al Simmons photo with his son...if his son is alive today, he's probably around 80!

In that Thorpe photo, looks like he tore the cover off the ball, man.

[Keith_Loving]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

Maybe we should try anyway. Even if 1/10 were scanned, it would be great. I mean.. I will contribute my 6!

I bought three (3) original 5x7 George Burke negatives recently and I already have them scanned. At 2000 DPI resolution, the file size in PNG is 232MB and in JPG is 38.6 MB

I sent them off and had them professionally scanned and they turned out even better than I could have imagined. Cost was $105 for the company I picked online.

On a side note, there is a new owner in Illinois who picked up many many boxes (about half of the Burke negatives) from an auction, he was able to get them for around $45,000. I have made one attempt at contacting the company in search for a one particular player from the Cardinals, but I never got a response. I can link you to the article if anyone is wanting to read about this transaction. I had to "pay" for the article and so I probably will need to take a screen shot of it of you want to read it, else you will have to pay to read the article online.

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by Keith_Loving

I bought three (3) original 5x7 George Burke negatives recently and I already have them scanned. At 2000 DPI resolution, the file size in PNG is 232MB and in JPG is 38.6 MB

I sent them off and had them professionally scanned and they turned out even better than I could have imagined. Cost was $105 for the company I picked online.

On a side note, there is a new owner in Illinois who picked up many many boxes (about half of the Burke negatives) from an auction, he was able to get them for around $45,000. I have made one attempt at contacting the company in search for a one particular player from the Cardinals, but I never got a response. I can link you to the article if anyone is wanting to read about this transaction. I had to "pay" for the article and so I probably will need to take a screen shot of it of you want to read it, else you will have to pay to read the article online.

Definitely would like to see it! Talk about a community project, restore the collection to the best that it can be, be interesting to say the least. The fact he has that many is interesting, thought they were gone to the wind so to speak.

I'm surprised you paid that much to get them scanned, did they restore as well? I have a negative scanner and did it myself and then sent them off to a guy overseas who did them for $2-15/each. Did an absolutely spectacular job of restoring them. It would have cost about $85/each if done though a company in the U.S. that oddly uses the same labor overseas.

[Keith_Loving]

27 double sized shoe hoxes were recovered and sold at auction. Does anyone have a link as to how many shoe boxes there was in total when Mary sold them to John Rogers? I must believe this could be around half of the collection.

http://i65.tinypic.com/21omuqg.png

I don't really collect baseball cards on a whole, nor do I collect the popular players in the game. I just focus on one player for sentimental reasons. I wasn't willing to take a risk at loosing the George Burke negatives, nor was I willing to send them out of the country. I found a website that I liked whose state is adjacent to mine, and I went with it. ^.^ Security and peace of mind comes first, price isn't an issue because I had so few to be done. If I had a box of hundreds of negatives, then price would have become an issue. But I only have just the three.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Keith_Loving

27 double sized shoe hoxes were recovered and sold at auction. Does anyone have a link as to how many shoe boxes there was in total when Mary sold them to John Rogers? I must believe this could be around half of the collection.

http://i65.tinypic.com/21omuqg.png

I don't know how many negatives a "double-sized shoe box" contains, but the 250,000 total negative count that the article estimates for the entire Burke/Brace collection sounds about right.

I doubt that there were any HOFers remaining in the collection by the time the assets were sold, as one of the first things that Rogers did upon acquiring the archive was to pull those out and sell them. Perhaps some stars remained, but there were no doubt many lesser-known and rarely-photographed players in the mix that will never be re-grouped in any meaningful way.

[thecatspajamas]

What would be ideal (to my mind) would be to have a wiki-type website that could serve as a repository of baseball imagery of all types wherein contributors could upload images tagged with player ID's, year/team depicted, and photographer (if known). The Burke or Conlon section of such a website could then serve as an archive as desired above, with moderators and/or users having the ability to correct misidentifications and fill in missing information as needed.

The images themselves would probably have to be watermarked or locked in some way to prevent duplication for reasons of potential copyright infringement, but such a site would be a tremendous help to those researching player IDs, dates and uniform styles in their own photos. This would be particularly true if the images were cross-referenced with a site like baseball-reference or retrosheet.

Sadly, I do not have the programming capability to set up such a website, nor would I have the time to moderate in any meaningful way, but would be happy to contribute scans to such a worthy endeavor if one ever did emerge on the web.

[Keith_Loving]

Can someone tell me is 2,965 the complete Conlon collection? Just wondering if there are more?

http://www.gettyimages.com/search/mo...opular#license

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by Keith_Loving

Can someone tell me is 2,965 the complete Conlon collection? Just wondering if there are more?

http://www.gettyimages.com/search/mo...opular#license

More original conlon images outside of neg collection? Yes.. nany more

[mikejanesphotography]

When mentioned sending them overseas I was referring to the digital files and not the actual negatives. Those never left my house.

$46,000 for those negatives,where was I when they were sold, assume it was with rights as sold to Rogers, would have jumped on it. Be nice to know their plans.