For early 1900s newspapers and magazines, there was no overnight national distribution of images. News photographs were shipped by plane, train and even boat. While this was okay for the many popular monthly magazines, most early daily newspapers had relatively few images and fewer still that were dated. While turn of the century news services could send the printed text … [Read more...]
Tips for Identifying Authentic Vintage News Photos
Vintage news photos are a highly popular area of collecting these days, but many collectors and sellers have difficulty knowing if that photo of Babe Ruth, Red Grange or Greta Garbo is vintage or a modern reproduction. As you'll likely expect, a later reprint will be worth a small fraction of the original. While authenticating photographs involves examining many aspects of … [Read more...]
Home Runs, Brawls and Foul Balls
New Jersey resident Jack Torsiello recently showed me his collection of choice photographs of New York baseball by former photographers for the New York Daily News. The photos with first-generation images from 1957 and 1961 are rare in format in that they are mounted to heavy boards and oversized at around 16 x 16 inches each. Jumbo sized news photos, especially when mounted … [Read more...]
Vintage Photo of the Day: Teenage Babe Ruth
He wasn’t The Babe yet. Just George; one of the students enrolled at St. Mary’s Industrial School. It was coming, though. His skill on the baseball diamond was impossible to miss, even as a teenager and soon he’d be discovered, signed to a pro baseball contract and sent on his way to immortality. The Vintage Photo of the Day is this image of Babe Ruth taken around 1912 … [Read more...]
1927 Babe Ruth Photograph Part of RMY’s New Auction
RMY Auctions has kicked off its first event of 2014 with dozens of vintage sports photographs, many of which have never been seen before. Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Mathewson, Wagner and Lajoie are just a few of the names collectors will see in the online auction, which is set to close January 14 and includes news service photos from several decades dating back to the early 20th … [Read more...]
Photo of the Day: Lou Gehrig, Spring Training 1934
Lou Gehrig came to spring training in 1934 in the prime of a career that would be cut short by a fatal illness seven years later. He had turned 30 during the previous season and married against his protective mother’s wishes six months earlier. In 1933, he had broken the big league record for most consecutive games played, a streak that began in 1925 and increased his … [Read more...]