The Future of Type I Photos

[hcv123]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

From his native island

Great photo!

[BeanTown]

Completely agree with the comparison to postcards years ago. How can you not like unique poses and photos that have paazaaa… Attitude is good right?

[prewarsports]

There is still a lot of good stuff out there in private collections, like the stuff Hunt's is selling for the Mathewson family. I was mostly referring to archives. I remember pulling a D-Day folder from a midwest archive in 2015 and there were three "Jaws of Death" photographs in there. Now they are $30,000-$100,000 each but at the time I remember thinking, "cool those are worth about $1000 each and we found three." The thrill of wondering what is in the next folder or box and getting to do that from 2013-2020 was awesome and I miss it, but the prices have gotten too high. I am now getting most of our for RMY, which is still 95% "fresh to the market", from people who bought archives decades ago and not the institutions themselves, and they all keep up on current market trends.

I will add one more insight that people can take for what it is. Either the top end of the sports photo market is overpriced (mostly card images and early Babe Ruth) or the non-sports market is underpriced (which is what I believe). Time will tell. In the entire photo industry NOTHING outside "art photography" is worth more than sports photography. I was told once by an old time collector "never buy who is in the photo, only buy who took the photo." The right Mickey Mantle photo from 1951 is worth more than any subject driven image beside the famous Billy the Kid tintype. This is a bit odd. I talk to people all the time who only see sports photos in relation to baseball cards and do not realize how the values are inflated in regard to literally every other aspect of photography in the world. You could dream up a scenario where the greatest image of anyone outside of sports is put on a shelf (say Edison in his lab inventing the modern light bulb or the Titanic hitting the iceberg from a hidden camera on deck) and there would be hundreds of images from the genre of sports worth much much more.

It will be interesting to see how the next ten years play out.

[Snapolit1]

Here’s a story.

[Snapolit1]

And here is baseball and American history.

[lumberjack]

This is in regard to something Rhys said. Back in the 1970s, I picked up a handful of Lewis Hine and FSA contact prints. Hine and the FSA guys were the apex of documentary photographers in the years before WW II. This stuff was considered art photography by then.

Today, you can find at least three baseball photographs in the average RMY auction (I think my guess is modestly low), that sell for more than you can get today for a Hine or an FSA photographer.

Boy, howdy....

In the event you were wondering, a Hine sold for about $200 in the 1970s while a news service photo of Babe Ruth went for a couple of bucks (if you could find one).

lumberjack

[GregMitch34]

Problem with this is the FSA photos are all available as new prints from Library of Congress for almost nothing because in public domain--were done for the gov't. Obviously not "Type I." But easy to get cheap.

[LEHR]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Here’s a story.

That's a fantastic Ruth photo. So much going on in that image!

[Lordstan]

While I agree photos may be undervalued in comparison to cards to a degree, I think it's really not a fair comparison per se. Rare does not mean expensive. Just because there is only one copy of something, doesn't mean someone wants it or will want to pay a lot for it. This is true for every type of collecting that exists.

The reason cards are proportionally more expensive is because more people collect them, hence more demand. Even though there is more supply, the demand still outpaces it. As photos grow in popularity, you will see prices increase simply because the demand side will go up. I agree with those that pointed out that the registry is probably the single biggest thing that made graded cards the rage they are now. When I started collecting and dealing in 1978, people were perfectly happy arguing about whether a card was Ex, Ex-Mt, NrMt, or Mint. Beauty was often in the eye of the beholder.

Since grading became the standard, more non passionate collectors(ie: "Investors") got involved because cards became a commodity. As long as you had a slab, it was easy to buy-sell-trade with minimal effort or knowledge needed. All you needed to know is that you owned the highest grade available and could brag about it to friends, etc as a focus of prestige. Most of the people back in the 70-80s and earlier, the hobby was more about joy and passion, than showing off to people outside the hobby. Most of my friends and acquaintances had no knowledge or interest in the hobby, so showing off a cool t206 card with a rare back had no impact at all. Now, we have so many new to the hobby people with more money than knowledge. What is really sad, is that it does not seem many have any interest in gaining the knowledge as long as they can buy slab with a really high number on it.
No other part of the hobby can really match cards that way. Autos, photos, etc are all collectibles that really are not uniform. They require more research and knowledge in order to buy/sell. As Loren has expressed, this knowledge gap leads probably a fair amount of people to be hesitant about jumping in. Autos are a bit ahead of photos as slabbing for them started much earlier.
Photos, of all types will likely increase in value over time. Just like in cards, the more desirable it is, the faster and higher it will likely go.

My standard advice every time I am asked about collecting is the same. Buy what you like. Buy what gives you shivers up your arm when you hold it. Buy what makes you smile every time you look at it. If you buy with an eye towards investment/monetary potential, you will win some and lose some. If you buy what you love regardless of price, you will never lose.

I buy Gehrig items, because I enjoy them. I have a very eclectic collection of other stuff that is rare and much of it is worthless in the marketplace. Do I wish I had bought more cobbs, ruths, etc? Yes and no. I had a blast collecting what I did, so while there is a small part of me that wished i would have bought more ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Matty, etc cards, I am ok with the choices I made. I got to spend around 14yrs with my dad going to 35-40 card shows a year, hanging with a ton of cool, and some very unique, people, talking sports all the time, all while collecting some really cool stuff.

Every post needs a photo, so here are two of my favorites, both from 1927