an ebay seller has 35,000 photos

[Nathan]

I contacted an ebay seller who is offering a large amount of original photos on ebay. I contacted the seller and asked how many he had and how much he would take for all the military aircraft photos(many of which have day glo). He wrote back stating he had 35,000 photos and would sell them to me at $25,000. Now I do not have 25,000 naturally. But was wondering is this a lot of money for all these photos? He said he got these photos from an estate sale. Many photos of Neptunes, F-8's, T-33's, Furys, with many of them in the day glo scheme.

He is selling them at buy it now or best offer. His prices are $11, $15, and $20. But said he would take $7 for the $11 photos and $12 for the $20 photos.?

Advice needed.

[RyanShort1]

Interesting. I wonder how many of those are really original, or just duplicate originals. I guess a lot would depend on the actual value of the photos. Is it just personal value, archival, or really worth some money to someone like a publisher?

Ryan

[Holedigger]

Photos are just that, Photos. Even if they are authentic vintage prints does NOT necessarily give the owner of the print the right to republish. It is a sticky point in vintage photography. In theory, the ownership and rights still belong to the photographer depending on the age. Though if shot for the government while working for the government, that changes things somewhat. There was a bill running through the works to clarify these type of issues called the "Orphan Works Bill" but it had a LOT of problems with stripping photographer's rights and making it easy/cheap to steal their work.

[Enemy Ace]

I would think that .15 cents to .25 cents per photo would be much more realistic if buying the entire collection. with that many shots there are bound to be many, many duplicate shots, shots of the same airplane, etc. Let's face it 50 shots of the same airplane from slightly different angles taken on the same day aren't going to be very valuable.
There are also questions of photo quality, who owns the image rights if you wanted to reproduce them etc. etc.
I would offer $5,000.00 and be reluctant to work up much from that.
For the record I think that there are enough ho-hum pics being posted on WIX already if that was your idea....
Also I would think that your personal finances would be better spent either earning a PPL or A&P Nathan. Just my .02.
-Robert

[sdennison]

So his $11 to $20 photos, in bulk are $0.71 photos, first offer? Sight unseen, the package is an unknown. Boils down to the cold fact that they are only worth the amount someone will pay.

[Nathan]

I would think that .15 cents to .25 cents per photo would be much more realistic if buying the entire collection. with that many shots there are bound to be many, many duplicate shots, shots of the same airplane, etc. Let's face it 50 shots of the same airplane from slightly different angles taken on the same day aren't going to be very valuable.
There are also questions of photo quality, who owns the image rights if you wanted to reproduce them etc. etc.
I would offer $5,000.00 and be reluctant to work up much from that.
For the record I think that there are enough ho-hum pics being posted on WIX already if that was your idea....
Also I would think that your personal finances would be better spent either earning a PPL or A&P Nathan. Just my .02.
-Robert

Don't worry Rob I wasn't planning on forking up for the entire collection.

Thanks,
Nate

[PeterA]

There are old aircraft snaps...and there are old aircraft snaps!!

PeterA

http://cgi.ebay.de/014-O-Foto-englisch- ... 20af68bad3

p.s. That is $114.39 USD or £72.73 UK pounds at today's rates for a single small original print.

Last edited by PeterA on Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

[k5083]

Peter is right. It depends.

IF they are all original transparencies and negatives and IF all taken by one or a few people so that the rights can be traced and IF they come with the copyrights and IF they are of decent quality, not damaged by light, heat, water or microbes, and IF they are of rare and interesting subject matter then $25K is a bargain for the right buyer. Think of it this way, you could write a few captions and publish at least 5 or 6 books using just the best ones.

If they are prints, provenance unknown, and the buyer says, "Huh? What's copyright?" they are just worth whatever value you would place on looking through them for your private enjoyment.

August

[Jack Cook]

Caveat emptor
I don't place alot of monitary value on photos except for unique stuff like nose art and specific units/pilots.
Save your money and go pillage the National Archives! That's what I did

[SuperGuppy]

That guy is on crack with the prices he is asking in his ebay store.........

A lot of his stuff is from Aerofiles (late Ron Harrison) and Picciani Aircraft slides.

[Nathan]

Thanks for the advice.

[Mgawa]

Calculated per sample image it is under the 1 USD per image and this is fine price. But real problem is that you have one subject, you said diaglo scheme, so it is hard to estimate that you will have any project to return money. Other things would be if you buy mixed stock of images and you have various types ranged from WW1 up to the modern jet age. This great cover give you option to return money.

In general you can use this material but only as 'item from collection', you could not have any rights. They belong to somebody, photographer, factory or institution so you should take care about this. For example- I have get some time ago a pack of the B-47 Stratojet images. Regarding to the last policy, Boeing charge and claim all Boeing images as its own and some charge for reproduction should be pay. Images I have are Public Release- Free of Charge, and as I know, once Public Release, they stay forever in that class. But anyway I should give credit 'Boeing', whenever I decide to publish them. Hope that I am not wrong...

Cheers

[jdvoss]

Given the price he is asking (and assuming that you are somewhat interested) I think the investment in a R/T airline ticket to visit and review the photo set would be most justified.

Caveat Emptor rules!