At the very least, you can usually narrow it down to a 10 year period based on paper type, even when there is no stamping. That pretty much comes with experience though. Otherwise you have to go with stamping, type of paper used for the caption sheet, etc.
Also, famous images were often produced over and over again, but the vast majority of the mundane images were produced for one time only and the dating on the photo will be the one and only time that it was printed. In other words, you want to be more careful when buying an image of Don Larsen pitching his perfect game than an image of Smead Jolly standing in the batters box.
Scott
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