Posted By:
Josh Evans
Mike:
Baseball negatives are a tricky lot. In a sense the better they are the less they are worth in comparison to the photos they made. Plus, there are rights issues at work and that seriously affects them as well. For a good guide as to what stuff is worth do some photo searches on my website (www.lelands.com) because all past auction sales are kept up there.
Let’s take Babe Ruth for example. Most Ruth negs sell for $500-1000 which is actually more than Ruth photos sell for on the low end. Ruth photos for the most part start at about $75 out of uniform to about $200-500 in uniform for the rank and file stuff. Pretty good stuff is about $500-1000 and the great stuff is thousands. This is a very broad generalization as there are so many factors that make these numbers spike up (and down) such as contrast (clarity), historical nature, age (how early in his career), and the artistry of the image itself (mise en scene if you will). Condition is a factor but it is amazing (and wonderful) how little it plays into things compared to say baseball cards.
But once the quality gets really high the photos take over. An amazing Babe Ruth negative will sell for much less than its positive counterpart because a negative has limitations. It is tough if not impossible to display (light box?), and a great deal of the value (at least when it was created) comes from its function over form. You really are not supposed to reproduce these things and sell them (at least legally) but you can, there are just limitations. I am not an attorney but I do have experience with all this and you could fill books with the legal issues and they are certainly not black & white (ha ha, only the images are).
But if you had rights to go along with them that does add tremendous value although you are still somewhat screwed because the rights do not only come from the photographers but from other potential entities such as MLB (for the team logos), the player themselves (Curtis Licensing in many cases), and who else knows can come out of the woodwork.
But the great thing is in owning a negative is that it is yours no matter what anyone says. I have collected them for many years (sold most of them) but no one can tell me what I can own, they can just complain about who I sell the prints to (which I never did ).
As for the Opinionator thank for your kind words. I like that word because you can easily make the word onion out of it.
Josh