Type II photos?

[thecatspajamas]

I think the most important thing to do before diving into serious photo collecting is to learn what goes into the terminology used and the methodology used to determine a photo's "Type," whether you choose to use the term "Type" or not. In the same way that you don't learn algebra just by looking at the answer key, or learn history by staring at a list of events with dates beside them, it would be quite difficult to learn to accurately analyze a photo just by reading the seller's description.

For one thing, sellers' descriptions are often wrong, or misleading (or both), as the sellers' primary objective is not always to educate the buyer. In no way am I including Henry Yee in that group, as his descriptions are typically accurate to a fault. But there are plenty of sellers (including auction houses) that make liberal use of the terms "original," "Type 1," "wire photo," etc when a knowledgable buyer can look at the scans provided and arrive at a far more precise (and accurate) judgement of the photo without being able to physically examine it.

I would love to see a second edition of Fogel and Yee's book if for no other reason than to see more copies of it out there, available and being used. An expanded and refined catalog of stamping styles would also be helpful, but I wouldn't expect any radical changes to the "Type" classification system to be put forth.