Press Photo and Wire Photo Questions - Newbie

[obcbeatle]

Hello:

I've been primarily a baseball card collector for the past 40 years and I have decided to branch out a little into collecting vintage photographs. I started a thread about a week ago re: some questions I had about the recent Henry Yee eBay auction. Thanks again to all those that answered my questions in that thread! Since then I've read the very informative Cycleback info. too at http://www.cycleback.com/

So ... I bought and received my first few press photo's and wire photo's this week and have some more questions, now that I have a few photo's in my hand :-)

I bought what I think is an original press photo (below). My questions are:

1) I THINK this is an original press photo because I don't see the obvious lines that the couple wire photo's I bought have on them. Also, the editorial/credit/date (07/10/47) are glued to the back on brownish paper with purple ink type, and there is an ACME credit stamp and N.E.A date stamp (07/18/47 ... file date?) also in purple ink. Is there anything else I can look for on the front of the photo to determine if it is an original photo as opposed to a copy of a photo that was created via the wiring process? BTW ... because the brown paper was glued to the back of the photo, the photo is pretty wrinkled which I assume is normal. Does the wrinkling in general detract from the value of these type of old photo's?

2) I see the N.E.A date (file date?) stamps on a lot of press photo's. I assume NEA stands for Newspaper Enterprise Association, but I don't see a definitive time that N.E.A. is/was in existence, i.e. like UPI was from 1958 - Today. And there seem to be a lot of NEA stamps on the backs of photo's with other news service stamps like ACME. Got me to wondering what the story is with NEA and why they are/were so prolific?

3) Is there anything I should know about counterfeit news stamps before I start purchasing more press photo's?

4) Is it possible to remove stickers off the back of these old photo's? I saw in a separate thread that gentle heat (hair dryer on low?) may be used to get the sticker off but was not sure how to get the sticker glue residue off.

5) For the couple wire photo's I bought ... is it true that if the lines in the photo are more pronounced that the photo may have been re-wired more than wire photo's with less pronounced lines? Or were certain wire processes just more destructive ...?

Thanks in advance for any pointers/comments!