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Old 07-04-2011, 12:20 PM
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thecatspajamas thecatspajamas is offline
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Incidentally, for anyone who was not aware, Henry Yee was one of the guys (along with I believe Marshall Fogel and Khyber Oser) who coined the terms Type 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. for photograph evaluation. He and Fogel were also instrumental in helping PSA when they began authenticating photos for Type classifications, which is a fairly recent addition to their services. I believe he was also heavily involved, at least initially, in the authentication process itself (not sure if that is still the case).

All of that is not to point out any kind of conflict of interest though, but rather to say that Yee knows his stuff when it comes to vintage photography, particularly baseball photos. His auctions have always had straightforward and insightful evaluations of the photos themselves along with his lively narratives of the people and events depicted in the photos. He was doing this long before PSA dipped their toes into this end of the collecting pool, and as far as I can tell from his last couple of auctions, has not shifted his emphasis from telling you how great the photo itself is to "isn't it great that PSA thinks this is an authentic photo." The PSA authentication is basically just a blurb in the description and an added picture.

That said, I think the addition of the PSA authentication, particularly with the thin slabs, has made a difference in the prices realized. I haven't gone through his latest auction as closely, but his previous one, which was smaller in scope and consisted of nearly all PSA-slabbed photos, brought in what a friend of mine called "stupid money." There were a lot of very nice photos, which Yee always has, but the trend seemed to be more towards the thousand-dollar-plus mark than usual. And keep in mind that this is all on eBay, not a major independent auction house (which may help explain the added "oomph" that the PSA name brought to the bottom line when dealing with more collectors who recognize their logo over Yee's name).
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