Trimming Vintage Photos
 

Suggestion to sellers of vintage photos: Rather than trimming them because you believe it will bring more money from collectors, show images of the photo untrimmed along with a photo of it matted in black to display where you would normally have trimmed the photo. Collectors like me would be much more likely to buy an untrimmed photo, but showing its possibilities couldn't hurt.

Also, when you look at the back of a vintage photo and see where the vintage notes have been trimmed off, it's very obvious that a modern trimming has taken place.

Yup.... completely agree. This happens far too often. :mad:

And 8x10 photos are supposed to measure 8x10.

It's frustrating. I have been buying a lot, and it's crazy how many measure 7 x 10 or 6.5 x 9

Ugh

+1

I absolutely agree! I'll always pay a significant premium for untrimmed photos.

Photographs aren't baseball cards. They don't need to have razor sharp edges. There's nothing wrong with baseball card collector sentiments in baseball cards, but baseball card sentiments don't always apply to photographs. Any serious photograph collector would rather have a photo with rough edges than one cut down to have sharp edges. "Razor sharp edges and pristine corners" are baseball card things, not photo collector things.

And knowledgeable photo people can usually tell when a photo has been trimmed.

This is also why I think there should never be professional grading for photos (I'm talking about for number/Poor thru Mint grades, not for authentication), because once that's done, idiot baseball card sellers will be trimming down photos trying to get mint 9s and 10.