Press Photo and Wire Photo Questions - Newbie

[obcbeatle]

Hmm ... not sure why my pics didn't show up. I can see them fine. Thanks for re-posting them Lance.

And Mark ... thanks for the feedback on counterfeit stamps. As a baseball card collector we have so many counterfeit issues to deal with when buying vintage cards off eBay. So I was curious about photograph stampings since I'm so new to the hobby and it seems like it would be easy to make/use counterfeit stamps.

As for the stickers on the back of photo's ... I was referring to the eBay seller name sticker "historicimages" on the back of the photo I posted. Thank you Lance for the clarification. I wasn't sure if it was common practice to put a 21st century sticker on the back of a a 20th century photo.

As for the quality of the wire photo's ... I have one wire photo that the lines on the front are more pronounced than on the other photo. I thought maybe if a wire photo was put on a wire machine again it would add more lines as opposed to a wire photo that was an original first copy wire photo never put on a wire machine again. I'm still not sure that made sense :-) Thank you Mark and Lance for the clarification about potential poor wire transmissions and the difference in quality between original photo's and wire photo's in general. This will help me in the future when buying photo's off eBay. Although I must say there are tons of interesting wire photo's on eBay right now, but seeing the quality of the wire photo (front) is rather difficult because of watermarks, etc.

Thank you Lance for identifying this photo as a Type 1. I was not certain. And also for the info. about NEA. BTW ... I tried to ILL the Fogel/Yee and Cycleback books from my public library but was told that the state of Vermont has no holdings for either copy. One of the hazards of living in rural Vermont I suppose :-)

Thanks to all for the feedback. Much appreciated and useful to me as I enter this new hobby!

[Lordstan]

Dude,
I don't know your name, but I thought you might be interested in this.

http://www.amazon.com/Portrait-Baseb.../dp/0971609713

[ChrisGalbreath]

Just FYI - the stickers on the back of the Historic Images / NEA photos are removable and will not damage the photo. This is for everything numbered NEA 2501 and higher. They are strictly used for inventory management purposes and were never intended to become a permanent part of the photo.

Hope this helps...

[thecatspajamas]

Mark, high five on the tag-team responses!

Chris, that is good to know. Any particular method that works best to remove them? Never mind. I just tried it myself. Simply got under one corner and it peeled right off. Thanks for the tip, as I probably never would have tried it otherwise!

[obcbeatle]

Originally Posted by ChrisGalbreath

Just FYI - the stickers on the back of the Historic Images / NEA photos are removable and will not damage the photo. This is for everything numbered NEA 2501 and higher. They are strictly used for inventory management purposes and were never intended to become a permanent part of the photo.

Hope this helps...

Thanks Chris! I just pulled one off with no problems!

[obcbeatle]

OK ... I guess I SHOULD get that book by Fogel/Yee et. al. as I am still kinda' confused about original Type I photographs (Lance if you still have a spare of the Fogel/Yee book you mentioned a few weeks ago you can PM me). My confusion is this. There was a 1938 Lefty Gomez press photo that I bought that I thought was an original Type I (unique ... only one produced at that time) photo until I saw an identical one last night that sold on eBay. The one I saw last night has the same brown paper provenance on the back and same # at the top of the brown paper, same date and ACME/NEA stamps, etc. The only difference is the stamps are in different places on the back than the photo I bought last week. So obviously this Type I photo was developed I assume off the same original negative multiple times by news services and distributed en masse (I'm pretty sure it's not a wire photo). Which now makes me wonder how one knows if a photo is rare in that it was not mass developed off an original negative i.e. a one of a kind Type I? Not sure that made sense. Still learning as you can tell :-) I guess my main questions are:

1) Is a Type I photo a one of a kind photo (no others exist)?
2) If not ... how do you determine if a Type I photo is rare i.e. there were not many of the Type I photo produced?

As always ... thanks for any enlightenment!