Photo opportunities in legendary and in general

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by SAllen2556

And wire photos were considered junk and regularly scrapped as such. I'm blown away by the interest and prices being paid for them. To me they're no more valuable than a photo copy.

Now the guy with the original negative....that's the guy with the gold! But the hobby hasn't quite come to that conclusion yet. Photos are still fetching more than negatives it seems. I really think that will change as time goes on. There's only one original negative.

I don't think you will ever see a market for negatives that will challenge the market for photos, because negatives do not satisfy either of the potential customer bases as well as vintage photos do.

I used to do Hollywood memorabilia sales retail at shows and wholesale to the tourist places in Hollywood, including lots of photos, so I have a business background in a very similar product. I had an extensive inventory of original press photos and also a lot of negatives, slides and transparencies. The old photos always were the big sellers. As the vintage inventory sold off, I decided to make new prints from the reproducible media. Guess what? No collectors wanted the modern prints, even if they were the same images. I could sell a yellowed, crazed, back-stamped, even warped, vintage still all day long for good money but that the same image reproduced from an original neg onto first rate modern paper was nearly worthless.

Then I thought about it. The market is either the retail end user--the collector--or a wholesale vendor--the dealer. An old negative ain't pretty to look at. With little or no aesthetic value for display purposes on a wall or in an album, negs have low retail appeal. Most collectors would rather have a vintage photo that they can look at or hang on the wall, so they pay for wall-ready examples of vintage images of their heroes. They pay even more when the markings and wear on the image peg it to a specific time and place. At the wholesale level, negatives are tools valued strictly on what can be done with them, i.e., make prints. Unfortunately, what sells for next to nothing are modern prints. If all you can do with an old negative is create low value modern prints, then the old negatives don't have much value to wholesale buyers either.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

An old negative ain't pretty to look at. With little or no aesthetic value for display purposes on a wall or in an album, negs have low retail appeal.

That's the way I always felt also, but then I bought a group of five large-format glass negatives, and they are actually pretty cool to look at, but I think it's just because they are old, solid items and it's nice to imagine the photographer pulling them out of his camera, creating prints, etc. At some point I will have prints made from them and find some way to display the entire mess. Still, as you say - the aesthetics just don't add up for negatives, especially film.

[Exhibitman]

I have a couple of magic lantern glass slides, so I understand what you mean, but they aren't anywhere as convenient to enjoy as a postcard.