Methods of Processing Photographs and How they Affect their Value on eBay
 

From the early days the processing of photographs went through many changes, each designed to make photography clearer and cheaper, less technical and available to the masses. Many famous inventors joined the race and their names are now synonymous with the photographic process they invented, such as Daguerre (Daguerreotype photographs), William Fox Talbot (Calotype), Blanquart Everard (albumen paper made from albumen in chickens’ eggs).

Many high value photographs owe more to their processing qualities than actual images they depict, especially albumen photographs and daguerrotypes, which can fetch incredibly high prices today.

But it takes a trained eye to spot these different processing types and if you take too long studying them you could miss out on buying less technologically valuable, but potentially much more profitable CDVs, Stereviews and Cabinet portraits. So I suggest you begin with these three photographic types and learn about more advanced features as you go along. I confess I know very little about the individual processing methods but I still make good money listing photos on eBay.

BUYING TIPS

I’m not going to put too fine a point on this: hugely profitable photographs can be found virtually anywhere, at boot sales, flea markets, even jumble sales and charity shops. The fact is photos are rarely discarded and most families keep their valuable memories safe and in one place to hand down through the generations until finally someone decides to offload them at auction or other venue. You’ll even find plenty selling on eBay, in bulk, which with a little thought, are often found to contain one or two really high price items among a multitude of generally low value photos.

* Your best hunting ground is local auction rooms, especially in rural areas, where you’ll usually find lots of Victorian photograph albums which alongside family photographs (cabinet portraits and CDVs) are also home to interesting social history illustrations such as bicycles, prams, children playing with teddy bears and rocking horses. These additional features, rather than purely people studies, are usually worth a premium on eBay.

* Small regional auction rooms are great places to find complete family collections retained sometimes over one hundred years plus and featuring vintage alongside more recent photographic images. This is especially so at country auctions featuring sales of rural estates and farms which have passed down through several generations until someone decides to sell up. These can be a goldmine of fabulous photographs from very early times and a positive Aladdin’s Cave of other paper collectibles such as postcards and newspapers.

* At auction and offline sales if you find one potentially price record-breaking photograph, you’ll very often find a hoard of similar items in the same lot or selling separately alongside. These are invariably worth buying in expectation of higher prices on eBay but be careful and don’t risk more than you can afford. At least you’ll get your money back, at best you could make hundreds or thousands of dollars on every photograph, sorry, photo, and you’ll hardly ever lose money on the deal.

* The great thing is our predecessors tended to value photographs more than people today and you’ll usually find all photographs over many decades contained in one place, a drawer for example, or large box, and invariably well packed and containing many unusual views of local topography and social history alongside purely family portraits.

* At the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries many newspapers and magazines began replacing hand drawn and engraved illustrations in their publications with photographic images which are collectable in their own right.

On eBay, and elsewhere, you’ll find people selling pages clipped from magazines containing text and photographs and achieving very good prices. Here’s a big tip: rather than dismantle an old publication to sell photographic images separately, try scanning one or two items while still in their original binding. If these items sell, try a few more, if those sell, consider dismantling the main item and list individual articles with photographic images.

I have often found this technique more than quadruples, sometimes much more than quadruples the potential resell value of the original publication. My most profitable sources for this technique include ‘Illustrated London News’, ‘Graphic’, ‘Sphere’, but there are many others you’ll usually find selling at low prices at local auction.