Legendary current auction photo errata

[ethicsprof]

great work!
they should put you on a retainer or at least give you a great present!

many thanks,
best,
barry

[Abravefan11]

I know when you're working with a large amount of material that errors can and will be made. And I also understand from reading this forum that ID'ing photos can be a difficult task. But what is the explanation for many of these errors?

"In some cases correct names written on the back were ignored."

If a name was written on the back of the photo wouldn't that be a good place to start?

Was it haste? Laziness? Lack of expertise?

I'm not bashing Legendary, I'm just curious what others think.

[bmarlowe1]

Tim - I can only give you my impression, as it applies to the narrow subject I know about - identifying Deaball Era and 19thC baseball photos.

1) I have found very very few people that are really good at this
2) It represents only a very small part of the auction business - it's very tiny compared to cards, therefore...
3) It does not make economic sense to have full-time in-house expertise for this. (which they might not be able to find anyway)
4) Mis-identified photos have been sold for years without adequate challenge. Hopefully it won't be so easy going forward.

In spite of all the angry posting on Net54, someone still bid over 3 grand for Leland's photo of Miller Huggins that's really Al Bridwell - there always seems to be someone with both $ and ignorance.

Barry said:"they should put you on a retainer or at least give you a great present!"

Thanks Barry. I would not disagree with that. When I post these things prior to the close of an auction - I am adding value to the auction (at least Legendary must think so, though Leland's clearly does not). Maybe I should wait until the auction closes.

[Abravefan11]

Originally Posted by bmarlowe1

2) It represents only a very small part of the auction business - it's very tiny compared to cards, therefore...
3) It does not make economic sense to have full-time in-house expertise for this. (which they might not be able to find anyway)

On your two points quoted above:

It may represent a small portion of the overall auction business, but in this case it's the entire focus of the auction and not a small subset.

Even if it doesn't make sense to have a full-time in-house expert, wouldn't it warrant bringing one in for this particular auction?

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Abravefan11

One your two points quoted above:

It may represent a small portion of the overall auction business, but in this case it's the entire auction focus and not a small subset.

Even if it doesn't make sense to have a full-time in-house expert, wouldn't it warrant bringing one in for this particular auction?

Isn't this John Rogers' collection of photos? If so this is probably only a drop in the bucket of what Legendary is going to be auctioning off...they'd be doing themselves a favor by hiring Mark or paying him a fee of some sort to make sure the photos are properly identified.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Dan, I think that's right, and if I recall descriptions of the purchase it was just an enormous quantity of photos.