Original negatives- underrated? Show yours

[mikejanesphotography]

Originally Posted by SAllen2556

I sold all my baseball ones last year through Hunt.
This is how they degrade over time:

I bought those, most - if not all - were restored.

Brearley Collection negatives originally.

[h2oya311]

Here's a few of mine - all Burke/Brace:

1936 Walter Alston:


1967 Johnny Bench:


1961 Lou Brock:


1939 Pee Wee Reese:


1940 Phil Rizzuto:


1960 Billy Williams:


I could certainly use some help getting better digital images of the Alston, Bench, and Brock.

[mikejanesphotography]

Love seeing Johnny in a Buffalo uniform, grew up going to the new stadium. Hoping to see him in a couple weeks. What do you mean better digital?

[horzverti]

Charles Conlon negatives - here are various years of longtime St. Louis Cardinals coach Clyde "Buzzy" Wares.

[horzverti]

Awesome shots Derek. The Rizzuto and Reeses are super!

[Forever Young]

Rookie

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

Rookie

SUPERB shots of Joe and Ted, Ben, which goes without saying but I'm saying it anyway!

[mikejanesphotography]

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

[horzverti]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

The Rogers' fraud story is a huge black eye on our hobby. I believe there was an ≈800 unit discrepancy between TSN's figure of 8300 Conlon negatives sold to Rogers in 2010 and the ≈7500 negs sold earlier this year as part of the liquidation of Rogers' assets. Rogers, via distributor(s), sold at least 75 individual 4 X 5 acetate negs around 2010 or 2011 if I remember correctly. I don't know if TSN's 8300 figure was a high estimate or if Rogers sold all 800. Rogers owned the Conlon negs, so I believe that he did have the legal right to sell them.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by mikejanesphotography

Maybe someone knows the answer here, but with negatives from Charles Conlon, how did they end up on the market? I know from when John Rodgers bought the collection from The Sporting News and they were recently re-sold hundreds of them came up missing, are the ones out there the missing ones? If that's the case, was Rodgers legally allowed to sell them to begin with? Same with Brace/Burke, apparently Rodgers sold them off violating the agreement, so were those negatives on the market before Rodgers did that? He's being sued for selling them and missing payments, along with dozens of other things!

Just goes to show the damage one guy can do...

With regard to the Burke/Brace archives, Rogers struck a deal with Mary Brace, George Brace's daughter, to purchase the archive for an up-front lump-sum payment (sort of a down-payment) plus periodic payments to follow. Per the deal, he had the ability to sell the original negatives before all of the payments had been made. I do not know if he was supposed to return a percentage of those sales to Mary as they happened, or what the specific terms of the repayment following sales were. He was also to be scanning the originals and returning an archive of scans to Mary that could be used to continue to produce prints. From what I understand, he either did not return scans to her, or the scans he did produce were sub-par, and after the initial lump-sum payment (and possibly one or two of the periodic payments?) he failed to make the periodic payments to follow up. There was a news article that quoted Rogers lawyer talking about unanticipated difficulties they had with copyright and marketing the images, and that they might have to unwind the deal. By the time he was missing payments though, the "key" images of HOFers were long gone, and the bulk of the archive had been sold, so there really was no way to unwind the deal and return the negatives. I'm sure Mary would have much preferred to get the archive back, but by the time Rogers was missing payments, it was much too late. That there was a deal that essentially allowed Rogers to sell off the collateral before having paid for it boggles my mind, but perhaps there are nuances to the deal that I am not aware of. Whatever the case, the last I heard, Mary had joined the line of creditors and business partners suing Rogers, and nothing usable (either negatives or scans) had been returned to her.

That said, Rogers was not the only one who released Burke/Brace negatives into the collecting community. There was a large grouping of negatives (several thousand, if memory serves) that proceeded from the estate of Jim Rowe that were sold through either Mastro or Legendary (it was either one of the last Mastro auctions or one of the first Legendary auctions, can't recall offhand which). I do not know if these were ever broken up and resold, or if they remained together in some other archive. It would be difficult to discern if they did hit the market now.

There are also anecdotal accounts of Brace himself having sold or bartered negatives over the years. (One story I heard had him trading negatives for help changing a tire on his vehicle.) So all of that is to say that there were some Burke/Brace negatives on the market prior to Rogers getting them, but clearly he did the most damage in terms of breaking up the archive and scattering it to the winds. That this was done without producing a comprehensive catalog of scans for later use and reference is, to me, the biggest tragedy of the whole story.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by h2oya311

Here's a few of mine - all Burke/Brace

I could certainly use some help getting better digital images of the Alston, Bench, and Brock.

Derek,
Sweet grouping of images! I am especially fond of the minor league images of players who would go on to major league greatness. If by "getting better digital images" you mean finding a way to scan them at higher resolution than the images that were posted when you purchased them, please feel free to send me a PM for some suggestions.