Sports Daguerrotypes and Ambrotypes

[Runscott]

Anyone own one of either?

I've been slowly building a type set of sports photos, but don't have examples of either. I bought this daguerrotype at an antique store yesterday, just to have one in hand to study - I had never seen one before in person. Very cool little item. If you tilt it slightly it goes 'negative'. Looking these up on ebay, I wasn't able to find very many real ones - a lot of people apparently get them mixed up with tintypes and ambrotypes.

[slidekellyslide]

I think a lot of people on ebay who list their item as a Daguerreotype have never actually seen one. It's very easy to tell one apart from a tintype. I don't believe I've ever seen a sports oriented Dag other than the one reportedly to be Alexander Cartwright and fellow Knickerbockers...but is it really Cartwright???

[drcy]

Dags are unique and easy to identify in person, because they are mirror-like (reflect like a mirror) and the image changes as you change the angle. You can see the normal positive image on a tintype no matter what from what angle you look at it.

There are a few baseball ambrotypes out there.

[barrysloate]

Dags are kind of heavy, as they are photographs on copper plates. Ambros are constructed from two pieces of overlaid glass. Tintypes are photos on a thin piece of metal and are very light. Dags will create a mirror image, and tilted a certain way you can actually see your own reflection. You can't do this with an ambro or tintype.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of known sports related tintypes, but only a handful of baseball or cricket ambros. As far as dags go, there are none known that definitively picture baseball, although there are a few known of children holding balls.

And dags are by far the most beautiful photographic medium ever created. But they were difficult to make and rather expensive, so they eventually became obsolete.

[GaryPassamonte]

This dag has some problems, but shows a child holding a ball.

[barrysloate]

That's a nice one Gary.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Dags are kind of heavy, as they are photographs on copper plates. Ambros are constructed from two pieces of overlaid glass. Tintypes are photos on a thin piece of metal and are very light. Dags will create a mirror image, and tilted a certain way you can actually see your own reflection. You can't do this with an ambro or tintype.

I was at an antique shop a few years ago that had 15-20 ambrotypes. Since I had never seen either an ambrotype or a dag, I didn't immediately know what I was looking at, other than they weren't tintypes. They were priced at $50-100, so I didn't purchase one. Now I need to figure out where I saw them so I can go back and look at them more closely. Nothing special - just pics of couples and individuals - but they were fun to look at.

[ramram]

As with all images, it's still all about the content but I have seen some fairly common looking dags that are worth quite a bit just because of the quality. You would know if you saw one because you stop and say "wow".

Be careful Scott, sounds like you might be catching a new collecting bug!

Rob M.