Henry Yee Auction

[Rob D.]

During my 30-plus years in journalism, I've worked at seven different newswpapers, ranging from a community weekly to a couple of major metropolitan ones. Because of my collecting interests, I've always taken an interest and explored the libraries and photo "morgues" where I worked. Based on what I've seen filed away, I would have reservations paying serious money for any photo touted as being unique or a 1 of 1.

My belief is that there is so much out there, and not just what was filed away by major newspapers. Midsize and smaller papers certainly can have jaw-dropping collections. What's more, even though it has been some time since papers entered the digital age, that doesn't mean they've made decisions to get rid of their stashes of hard-copy photographs. As an example, my current employer has a building full of vintage photographs stored off site, where they've been sitting since the 1970s. There simply hasn't been a need to do anything with them, so there they sit. But my guess is they eventually will come to market, as will other archives.

Also, at a major paper I worked at about 20 years ago, I was killing some time during my lunch hour one day looking through folders of baseball subjects. There were three, 2-inch-thick folders of Babe Ruth photos, including what we now call Type 1 examples of him as a Red Sox player. The Joe Jackson file was equally impressive, with multiple copies of some photos. Ty Cobb? Easily 200 vintage photos.

Given the fact that this paper is in a southern city where college basketball is king, I can only imagine what resides in the archives of newspapers where major-league baseball dominated the local sports scene.