Photo question: Gehrig/Ruth July 4, 1939

[prewarsports]

I hear ya Ben, no issues whatsoever with what you said and I am sure there probably is another one out there somewhere.

Most of these famous photos had many (hundreds for sure) printed and distributed, its all just a matter of how many have survived. Just like baseball cards, these photographs had absolutely no value beyond the functional image itself and as such, they were given no respect by newsrooms, magazines, or institutions until the last 20-30 years.

When we got a newspaper archive in a few years ago (the one with all the Conlon images), I was blown away to hear that the newspaper threw away their entire archive of sports photos... IN 1996! You would think that SOMEONE by that time would have taken a look and thought to themselves, "hey there is some pretty old photos of some pretty famous people in here, maybe we should save these" but it was one lone sports editor who dumpster dived and saved all those things (but 50% of the archive still got put in a landfill, the stuff he did not want). You would have expected this in the 1940's, but 1996? Crazy. If this was happening in 1996, it is no wonder 99% or more of all the valuable older images ever taken and distributed to newspapers are now lost to history.

Photos as a whole are not rare, there are hundreds of millions of press photos in all the newspaper archives in the country, but quality images of specific events are many times rarer than the famed T206 Wagner! This is why the best images will continue to rise in value and remain tremendous investments compared to other collectibles out there.

Rhys