1898 Princeton Photo Yearbook - about to hit the chop shop?

[Runscott]

This beautiful 1898 Princeton photo yearbook recently sold on ebay for $488. It contains cardboard pages, each with two albumens mounted - imperial size prints. Pach Brothers also created imperial-size cabinets (real ones) using the same images - these go for good money.

Recently a similar 1897 Yale photo yearbook was 'parted out' - the cardboard photo pages cut in half, each piece sold as if it were a natural cabinet card.

Deplorable.

I sincerely hope that whoever won this 1898 Princeton album does not do the same thing. It would be different if it were one of the Pach albums that was created with real mounted cabinet cards, but the 1897 Yale one wasn't, and either is this 1898 Princeton.

1898 Princeton Photo Yearbook

Here's what one of the board-backed pages of two albumen prints looks like prior to being chopped down and sold as individual cabinet cards:



There should be a limit to what we destroy in order to make a buck.