Is this really considered to be a Type 1 photo?
 

I usually don't think twice about vintage photos I see offered on Ebay, other auctions or the BST, but this one, in the recently ended Mears auction was just too cool for a baseball fan who has done his share of hunting in years past.

The question is, even though it has to be from the original negative and is identified as Type 1, do you guys who collect photographs consider these types of unpublished personal photographs to be Type 1. Do they have to come from newspapers, wire services or studios to be considered Type 1 by collectors, or are "snaphots" included in the definition beacuse they came directly from negatives?

It doesn't really matter to me as I like the content and wanted the picture even without that designation. Just curious is all.

It qualifies as Type I, aka original. It fits the literal Type I definition. If you read the Type system definition, it doesn't specifically say news photos, it is just generally applied to that area in part because a large portion of sports photos are news photos. If another type of photo fits one of the definitions it fits.

A photo's Type is essentially shorthand for when and how the print was produced in relation to the original negative. A Type can be assigned to any kind of photograph, but not every photograph within that kind will have a clear Type.

The When part of the Type is why you will most often see it used with news photos, which tend to have a lot more information on the back regarding when the print was produced. By definition, a Type 1 photo has to have been produced within about 2 years from when it was shot. With many snapshot photos, especially candid out-of-uniform shots, it is difficult to determine exactly when the photo was taken, and even more difficult to narrow down when the print was produced. If you can somehow, then you can assign a Type to a snapshot just as well as a news photo, but more often I fall back to just calling them "Original" when the time frame is indeterminate.