Photos to compliment autographs?

[old13man]

Not sure if this is posted in the right category but I am looking for a website to buy 8x10's to frame with my autographed index cards. Does anyone have a good spot they buy copies of pre-war photographs? All I can find is ebay and some had pretty bad reviews of the quality of copies.

Thanks,
CJ

[mr2686]

Ebay can be hit and miss for quality of photos. I have noticed that a lot of those photos can also be accessed on the library of Congress website (but you might have to do some digging) and if you have a good printer and photo shop you can print out some nice results.
Also, George Brace's daughter runs a website where they print out his photos from the original negs. They have a online catalog and the quality is outstanding. Here's the link. http://georgebracephoto.com/index.html
Hope that helps

[drc]

I was thinking the same. If you have a nice printer you could try printing out LOC baseball photos. They provide very high quality digital images for free. The LOC owns and scans the original negatives and, since it's a government entity, the images are free to use by the public.

UPI and similar did high quality reprints of their old photos. These are actual news photos with the official stamps on back, but were made later and thus are cheaper than the originals. You might ask if anyone on the board has any for sale.

You could also get into vintage news photos. I bet you could get some reasonably priced originals for your autographs. For a lot of players, including star players, you can find reasonably priced originals.

Something else to consider would be magazine covers and similar.

[MacDice]

If you are order via eBay, just ask them if the photos are printed via a photo lab.

To change the subject slightly, I always enjoyed vintage photos of players signing autographs for kids. Always thought that it would look nice to make those images with a 3x5.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by MacDice

If you are order via eBay, just ask them if the photos are printed via a photo lab.

Also ask them if they scanned the photo from the original themselves, and if so, at what resolution.

Typically, if they act at all squirrelly or avoid giving a direct answer, then they've just done a screen grab from the archives, an auction site, or just some random location they found by googling the player's name on the internet. These may look great on-screen, but the quality suffers greatly when printed.

Also be aware that the resolution the photo is printed at is not necessarily what the original was scanned at.

When all else fails, if you find what looks to be a good supplier of repro photos, do a cheap test buy from them to see what the quality is like. Or, for that matter, ask if anyone here has had experience with that seller.

[old13man]

Thanks for the help everyone. I actually found some great photos through the Library of Congress. Now I just have to figure out how to edit the size to print them accordingly!