Van Oeyen Photo
 

I picked up this photo for a grand total of $10. Is marked on the back that it's from the Western Reserve Historical Society's Van Oeyen collection. There is of course a real place with a significant collection of sports photos. Scratching my head. Looks new but is the museum in the business of printing new copies? Is this just a gift shop item?

Ya its a modern reprint...great image though

Even as a reprint, $10 is a reasonable price. I would guess it may have been some sort of internal or press photo, not a gift short item.

The WRHS is where a large chunk of Van Oeyen's negatives wound up. They were originally pulled from his files for a retrospective book of his photography that was never published. They still have the negatives there, and I believe you can purchase prints directly from them if you go there in person, but they also have an arrangement with Getty for many of the images. Bill Boyd on our board was in contact with them quite a bit when trying to pin down info on some Van Oeyen photos of Babe Ruth that he had.

Unfortunately, the WRHS does not have a website with the photos where they are publicly available for remote viewing or ordering prints, and their catalog of Van Oeyen's images, such that it is, has a lot of missing information regarding who the subjects are in many of the images.

Long story short, that does appear to be a modern print from one of the original negatives that they have in their archive. As David said, $10 is not a bad price for a quality modern reprint from the original negative, and I believe is substantially less than what they would charge you for the same print today.

Steve,
These copies can be purchased over the phone as well, by calling the WRHS, as long as you know the folder number of the photo you want. The WRHS has about 500 photos in the VanOeyen collection, about 26 of Babe Ruth. At least that is what they have on their index list. Their index list is for sale, however many on the list are unidentified, and remain so.
I posted a couple of sample pages on a thread about a year and a half ago. The photos remain unidentified. Getty owns many of the negatives to the original photos they have on file. The WRHS is allowed to sell a copy from the originals, but I am sure Getty gets the majority of the $10.
Here is a link to the thread I started some time ago, with an example of two of the index pages.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=189967

Bill many thanks. I did a search here before posting and didn't see your thread.

I didn't think I was getting a steal for $10, but was curious why they were making prints. Thanks.