The Future of Type I Photos
 

I don't know if this has come up before, but here goes.

We all know that a new, major buying trend in recent years has been in vintage Type I photos. I resisted (though have large collection of M101-2, as I am a photog myself) until the past week when I won a Ruth and a Mays.

But here is what I am wondering. Of course, rarity/scarcity has been a big deal for a long time. But the top players always draw much value even when dozens, hundreds, even thousands of a particular card or issue exist.

Yet, in many cases, Type I photos can be one of a kind or at least very few of a kind, with little chance that more will surface. PSA authenticates and presents them nicely in jumbo holders and the images are usually great--and in large size, and god bless them, usually without "centering" issues. Sometimes they were taken by the most famous baseball photogs.

Anyway: As much as many of these have surged in value, shouldn't they actually go much higher in the future--due to the scarcity thing? Or even comparing similar images and size: Just for example, why should a Ruth Butterfinger or Ruth Quaker Oats, of which there are at least dozens, be worth more than a nice, similar, but nothing special Type I Ruth which might be one or three of a kind? Or pick your own examples of photo vs. card. Why should a Gehrig Goudey, almost too numerous to count, be worth more than a Type I Gehrig with a unique or nearly unique large image? Well, you get the idea.

I agree that certain Type 1 photos are just breathtaking and with a scarcity as you mentioned (one or few of a kind), only have room to run. Make it a coveted player, playing days, maybe even a little provenance or something unique about the photo and well you get this...

There are hundreds to probably thousands of photos out there of the big name guys of each era like WaJo, Ruth, Mays, Jackie, etc. The ones that will truly surge in value are going to have to have story, come from a historic event, be a card image, and/or just breathtaking imagery.

The reason they aren't now is because of demand. He supply of Ruth imagery seems never ending as well.

Yes, thousands of images of these guys--but vast number are not duplicated, unlike cards with same images, sometimes thousands each. And yes, demand not so high right now but my question is why and why won't that change in era where rarity seems to count so much. And yes, plenty of so-so images but then again most card images are so-so and look like each other....

What really kicked card collecting into the stratosphere was the registry. Collecting became a dick measuring contest of sorts for many people. A race … a game … one more thing to win. Collecting photos doesn’t have that aspect because, as we know these photos are rare, there is no population report.

To me, photos over cards every day of the week. Look at Hunts Christy Mathewson auction. Stunning stuff.

Try as I may, I have never learned lesson of rarity vs scarcity. I seem to specialize in rare Yankee photos that do not have a lot of demand. Here is a possibly unique Bain photo of Alex Burr who played 1 game in 1914 and then went to war, dying in France in a flying accident. Also a Walter Bernhardt Conlon photo from Culver archive, who played 1 game in 1918 coming directly from Penn with no minor league experience, went to war and never returned to baseball. Someday my ship will come in...LOL

I started collecting Type 1 snapshot photos about 10+ years ago.
At the time very..very..few collectors. Hardly any photos at auction houses.

...now....you are starting to see a strong steady increase of photo lots being added and even some auctions are only Type 1 photos.

It will increase in the future. It's happening now, especially the past few years.

However, photos are not mainstreamed yet vs cards. They are not formatted to a set. Due to them being so unique and different, there's no real price guide. It's the wild wild west with pricing to some degree.

So why the increase? One reason I think, collectors are being out paced with tradition cards cost and fatigue of seeing the same cards over and over again (add in there fraud issues too).....Where as photos offer something truly uniquely special on all levels (as Brian D. stated above) and collectors are starting to connect with that.

Would you rather see a newly discovered photo of Ted Williams or the same Ted Williams cards? For me, I still love cards, but I pick the photos.

https://i.imgur.com/QlID9If.jpg

Cards will always be the proverbial 800 pound gorilla of the hobby, with autographs second, then memorabilia including photos. It's exactly the uniformity of cards and autographs that lends itself to pop reports, price guides, etc., and places them alongside the big boys of collecting, stamps and coins. Photos are too individual to lend themselves to that kind of cataloguing, but, like everything else in the hobby, photos--and especially great ones--have been on a tear in the last few years, so it's not like they're falling between the cracks. I suspect that collecting top photos now, like other premium examples of memorabilia, will prove to be a smart investment down the road, perhaps even more so than cards or autographs. I don't know why that wouldn't be the case. I was floored today when I got the Heritage mailer with their WaJo uni on the cover with an auction estimate of 3M+. I was in Boston in 2006 when Sothebys/SCP ran that same uni in a very prestigious live auction, and if memory serves correctly, it went for somewhere around 150K. What happened to make it now worth more than 20 times that much? I don't know, although I really can't see it doing anything like 3M today. Just my opinion, though, and what the heck do I know.

Good points, but what makes photos different from other memorabilia is that they are closer to "cards"--similar shape, often similar images or type of images (though not art/illustrations), but larger in size. A little easier to compare to cards than a ball or shirt of cap or bat.

I love collecting Type 1 photos. Early photography is so much more interesting to me than most cards. As with card collecting, I tend to focus more on the obscure or second/third tier players as opposed to the elite HOF'ers, as I feel like these guys typically have more of a story to tell/discover.

One thing that seemingly hasn't happened yet is insiders making their way into news storage facilities and looting them like rare books/maps/etc and libraries.

It's hard to know how many are out there waiting to be "leaked" from their storage or newspapers/media figuring out those old photos are a hot revenue stream.

Photos have always been more about the story to me than anything else. As a collectible, it marries so many elements together, each of which is compelling: subject, event, photographer, location, etc. This makes photos unique. I worry that they’re being treated as commodities in the collecting marketplace currently, being flipped by dealers to capitalize on their popularity, driven mainly by “Type”. Seasoned collectors that appreciate the story will always hold photos in higher regard though. Many of them are museum pieces, one of a handful known to exist. I hope they continue to be treated that way.

I'm sure that's been going on for years. About 15 years ago, a notorious hobby figure named John Rogers set about buying all of the old newspaper photo archives he could get his hands on, and he got a lot by offering the owners significant money for something they had come to perceive as worth little and in fact costing them in storage space. Rogers was buying and selling thousands of photos a years for several years until he got busted for fraud in not paying his obligations and other nefarious activities. I don't know what happened to the photos he had when his operation went down.

+1 yea this is one of the early topics of Jim Chapman's book. I'm fairly certain Rhys from RMY also had/has a partnership with Historic Images (https://historicimages.com/) and gets early looks into press collections.

Many news prints have been destroyed over time as companies went under, storage became to expensive, and the digital world expanded.

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All laid out here…

https://defector.com/he-said-he-was-...of-memorabilia

I think good photos have a bright future but meh photos are going to fall back. The main difference is that composition and quality of the image are big factors in desirability. A card is the same image, differentiated on condition. A photo has an aesthetic that depends on a variety of factors: subject, quality, composition, story. Here is a favorite of mine, the Cubs on Catalina Island for spring training, Gabby Hartnett at the front, walking along the harbor at Avalon imitating The Seven Dwarves doing Hi Ho It's Off To Work We Go from Snow White. It has everything I could want: good subject, solid composition, nice quality, and an instantly understood, whimsical story.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20Catalina.jpg

Or this one of Satchel Paige warming up:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ap%20Paige.jpg

I like a sharp, iconic portrait too, like this June 21, 1935 Joe Louis:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...trait%201.jpeg

I will add a couple thoughts with quite a bit of experience. When I started RMY Auctions in 2013, everyone thought that photographs would never be a stand-alone hobby, but just things to throw into major auctions at the end. Now everyone has a photo division, but all they are doing is recycling many of the same images that have been sold and resold numerous times, because nothing new is really hitting the market. Photos were not worth much ten years ago and newspapers were calling to try and dump their photographs. We would go into basements and haul out dusty boxes of photographs just so that newspapers could clear out space in warehouses. Everything was "fresh to the market." In ten years the ENTIRE landscape has shifted. Newspapers and archives not only are holding onto their images, but treating them like gold and re-evaluating them as substantial assets, getting appraisals in the tens of millions of dollars. Most of the newspapers in the country are now part of large groups under a corporate entity. Rather than sell, most are being donated to museums for HUGE tax write offs, or scanned and organized in secure facilities. "The good old days" of ten years ago are a distant memory and we will never go back there again. Very few new archives will ever hit the market.

Great insight Rhys.

I collected postcards when no one really cared about them and they could be had for a fraction of what cards were going for. I feel like I'm currently at the exact same place with significant photographs.

Ruth final Yankees game...

https://photos.imageevent.com/bicem/...0NY%20Game.jpg

Oh I don't know, something new pops up every now and then :D

How about this one...
 

From his native island

So true. You got in early and smart, Rhys. Did you have any idea what gold you were mining at the time?

One qualifier: there are lots of private 'archives' out there. For example, sports writers in the analog days had files of photos that they got from their jobs and those files come up for sale in flea markets, paper fairs, antique shows, etc. Most of it is dross but one can run across a vein of gold now and then. This 1969 Simpson premium came out of one such archive last month:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...%20Premium.jpg

This Ali photo came from one I found at an antique show years ago:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ge/Ali%201.jpg

Didn't know Beckett used PSA's type system.

I think it was probably very early on they used it. And then psa said woa woa no more of that. I'm under the impression PSA has it trademarked. Who knows.

I didn't know Beckett graded photos.

I got my first-ever PSA slabbed photo a few months ago. Heavy and bulky. Not a fan of the slabs. I wish CGC had stuck with its early effort:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...e/Durocher.jpg

They were thin, light, and came three-hole punched for storage in oversized binders.

This is the Mays I got a few day ago. As many have said, it's nice (vital?) to "have a story" and this one is Willie's first return to NYC with the launch of the Mets. I've never seen this exact image before, although a couple with different angles on perhaps the same meetup. And, as others have said, picture quality also key.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1715197703

First, there are some great photos posted here, guys!

I love photos. I think what prevents me from going after them is first, not feeling great about being able to ID a type 1 so that means I am limited to buying it in the holder. Nothing wrong with that but here is where it gets tricky...what do you pay?

Pop is not as relevant because we know pop is going to be considerably low but there is no "price guide" or even a place to go to see sales prices for each team or athlete so we can make an informed decision on what to pay.

And to the person who was grappling with rare vs scarce:

According to Garner's Modern American Usage RARE refers to a consistent infrequency, usually of things of superior quality. SCARCE refers to anything that is not plentiful, even ordinary things that are temporarily hard to find. This means that something can be considered scarce once demand exceeds supply. Nothing can be rare based solely on demand.

I know you said type 1 in the subject line of this thread but don't overlook other types as well. An early printed photo just beyond two years of when taken (type 2) or a period photo made from an early generation copy negative that is still very clear (type 3) or a photo with both these qualities (type 4) are very nearly as good as a type 1 in my opinion but at a fraction of the price.

Not all type 2/3/4 photos are created equal, you really have to consider how close to type 1's they are or are not.

You can learn through experience, it's really not that difficult once you know what to look for.

Anyway, I would hate to learn on the job and pay type 1 money for a non authenticated photo only to find out that it is not. Did this with cards in the early days and still recovering from those loses.

Being able to buy photos in person could certainly reduce the learning curve but buying online, at this point for me, is just guessing.

Yeah, would definitely start with cheaper photos and work your way up, even then it's still about comfortable risk level vs reward.

I've definitely had some big wins and some big misses along the way.

If you are not missing then you are not trying hard enough. Appreciate the advice.

As cool as that picture is to everyone, I just want to get in a time machine and stop them from wrongly using those commas on that sign!!!!!!!!!!! :D:eek::D

The "type" class is overrated much like most of what PSA does. You can get the swing of what's a vintage print on your own. There's gold in blank backs.

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LOVE that one!
 

Great photo!

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?

+1. Would add that 'type' is hype. I far prefer a type 3 ["A 2nd generation photograph, developed from a duplicate negative or wire transmission, during the period (within approximately two years of when the picture was taken)."] team-issued photo of a significant player from his rookie year than a random type 1 photo from the same year.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ize/image.jpeg
https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ay%20promo.jpg
https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...am%20issue.JPG

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

https://live.staticflickr.com/7509/1...ece4d454_o.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/7524/1...a4e47c38_o.jpg

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.

Here’s a story.

And here is baseball and American history.

classic photography
 

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

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.

library of Congress
 

Yes, you can get FSA or Hine photos today from a number of sources, just as you can get pristine Deadball photos today from, say, the Chicago History Museum.

This is great if you want a photo just for the sake of having a terrific photo. I understand that. The Chicago History photos are astounding; I have a few of them.

But, it is nearly impossible to find Hine or FSA vintage prints today (Evans Archives has had a few in recent past). Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Joe Jackson, Matty...those images are available as Type I photos and the prices are thru the roof.

I have a question for you? How many people are spending big money for Type I HOFers. What sort of bubble is at work. I'd really like to know.

I am less intrigued by end prices than the market dynamics at work. Supply is the critical and limiting factor as many unique images are off the market for years, if not decades. I agree with Rhys that one of main forthcoming sources of images will be major collectors who at some point decide to liquidate their holdings. The churn factor is strong and even more recognizable than with cards as most prints have easily recognizable traits that make them easy to trace through the AHs.

I also agree that the sports photos market is unlike any other photography market, and much of that is the result of the gravitational pull of the sports card market. That pull is permanent and evident in the premium given to card images. A sign that the sports photo market is maturing will be when the premium for card images is not so pronounced.

Interesting conservation thread. If you are interested in the rise of baseball photography and discussions of many of the issues in this thread you may be interested in my book.

https://chapmandeadballcollection.com/

Samples from my collection
 

I love the older photo's!

Attachment 620995
Attachment 620996
Attachment 620997

Incredible! Love seeing these out of slabs, too.

As I noted when I started this thread, I had no Type Is until the past week. I posted the Willie Mays one I got, but my thoughts on this subject were really inspired by winning the Babe below. It struck me that 1) I'd never seen that image before so may be one of a kind 2) it's a great image with catcher also in action 3) the price was under $1000. I started thinking about, say, the popular Kashin card for Ruth, with a staged, static pose, which costs at least twice as much as my photo, even in a low grade and for which PSA alone has graded over 200 (so you can imagine the numbers including SGC and raw).

Anyway, lot of good replies here on why photos only now catching on and limits to how much they may be valued in future vs. cards. Still, the appeal of (many) photos seems undeniable and growing. I should point out that surging prices for M101-2s Sportin News Supplements also fit the trend--although not Type I photos, they are very large sized, based on fantastic photos, and very few in number, especially if in good shape.


https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1715263546

I was super excited to get my Jake Stahl last month. It is the most I have personally spent on anything baseball related and also the first time I didn't try to limit what I spent to acquire it.

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

Thanks! Thats about 8 years worth of selective collecting...but there's more! :)