eBay

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

100+years old album. Pictures seem from a family and friends relatives. A few pics dated but mostly not. There are a few names. There is a mrs. Clifford p. Covert. There is a baby named Mary Jane Covert born june 1918. Most of the adult pictures were taken in the late 1800. The family should be in Iowa. Many pics were taken in Marengo iowa, some Williamsburg, iowa. There are 45 photos.
Should I list it as an auction or a fixed-price? What is the estimated price if listed as fixed? First time to sell photos. Thanks.

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

Pic1

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

Pic2

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

Pic3

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

I found a Clifford P. Covert, wife:Elizabeth Covert on the only census record. No info on Mary Ann Covert, burn June 1918.

dreambooks · ‎09-11-2016

With the baby photo there is a card with "Mrs. Clifford P. Covert"on one side and the baby's name, bithday, weight and age on the other side. The baby's name is Mary Ann Covert. Mostly likely this is a Covert family album but not certain.

This could be very valuable to the right person. But as a seller, what is the appropriate price? It will be hard to find that person. Thanks.

mmadigan · ‎09-12-2016

I assume this is the one you found. This Mary Jane was born 27 June 1918 and married a Swanson and died in CA She could be the one you want.

Home in 1920: Cherokee Ward 3, Cherokee, Iowa Street: Round Ave Race: White Gender: Female Relation to Head of House: Daughter Marital Status: Single Father's name: Clifford P Covert Father's Birthplace: Iowa Mother's name: Elizabeth Covert Mother's Birthplace: Iowa Neighbors:

Household Members: Name Age

Mary J Covert 1
[1 6/12]

Note the links above results from a copy & paste and will not work

shakhammer8u4s · ‎09-12-2016

I buy and sell a lot of photo albums and check eBay almost daily for them. That said, I have close to no experience selling albums without some sort of interesting theme, e.g. 19th century quintuplet circus performers.

I have a sense that antique booth owners buy these to sell the individual cabinet photos. I imagine there are collectors of the places where the photographers worked, so include those towns in your keywords. There are also collectors of the albums. You should not list this at auction unless there is something really interesting that you pull out of it. If you do not discover anything exciting, I would list at fixed price $150ish with best offer and with no bites would take anything $75+ after a reasonable amount of time has passed.

I know Michele buys and sells individual photos, so perhaps she can chime in at some point.

dreambooks · ‎09-12-2016

Thanks. I willblook at the link when i got back home. That is definitely the family I am looking for.

figtree3 · ‎09-12-2016

As a frequent buyer (not seller, usually) of antique photos, my take on this is similar to shakhammer's, that it would be best to sell this at a fixed price. An exception would be if the majority of the photos in the album were unusual in some way. From what you've said and shown, it doesn't sound as if they are.

You should also definitely list all of the identified names, and towns where the photos were taken and where they lived. I note that Clifford and Elizabeth later apparently moved to Minnesota, as their burial places are listed in Willmar, Kandiyohi County, Minnesota in Find A Grave, as are at least some of the children's.

If all of the photos in the album are sort of typical portraits similar to what is shown here, I would say that a price of $75 might work for the right buyer and would be a good fixed price to try.

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Current avatar: Actress Myrna Loy.

imagine.ink · ‎09-12-2016

As Shak said, you can sell it by theme, but I have rarely seen a "themed" photo album and the one time I did, I let a very valuable one slip away. From a post I made on a thread in early 2015:

******

UGH!!!!

I just found out that I let another great find slip away. This is a more complicated story, so let me explain ...

Last summer (or thereabouts), I was at an antique mall in Maryland just over the border from Pennsylvania. This is a routine, and somewhat rundown, antique mall that I've been to a "million" times, but it comprises about 150 dealers' booths that I enjoy strolling around (although I actually don't find a lot of things worthy of resale).

At one of the more "sloppy" booths (I think people who shop regularly at antiques mall know what that means: a bunch of stuff indiscriminately tagged and ~~thrown around~~ displayed in an unattractive fashion), I found a plastic photo album containing snapshots that someone had taken of the 1969 moon landing as it appeared on TV. It was priced at $30.

I had never seen anything like it: These were photos of an old-fashioned TV screen on which the images from the moon landing were televised. Obviously, the person who took the photos was so excited at the historic event unfolding before their eyes that they sought to preserve these moments with black/white photos showing the scenes on TV (or they my have used color film, but the TV was a black/white TV).

I thought this was fascinating in a bizarre pop-culture kind of way, but the album itself was a nothing-special cheap plastic album and I just wasn't sure if I could do anything with it. My passion is 19th century photos.

So I passed it by and went on to other booths. However, I found it sufficiently interesting that I showed it to my husband who was browsing in another part of the mall.

Months passed. On a more recent trip to this same antiques mall, I picked up a free Antiques & Auction News Paper dated January 16, 2015. There was an article in it titled Results Announced From Swann's Vernacular Imagery, Photobooks and Fine Photographs Sale.

I read the article and almost stopped breathing when I came across: "An album with 35 snapshots of a television screen as Apollo II landed on the moon in 1969 sold for $8,750 to a collector ..."

I immediately went online to find the December 11 auction results and uncovered this:

http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullcatalogue.asp?salelot=2370+++++186+&refno=++692316&image...

Was it the same album? I can't be sure ... but the photos are black/white and the album is described as "oblong vivid blue plastic album with plastic spiral binding; each photograph slipped into a plastic sleeve."

The one I found was a cheap, ugly plastic (but I don't remember the color) and I definitely remember the photos were slipped in plastic sleeves in the album (I noted this because whenever I buy an album, I always make sure the photos aren't glued or stuck to the page).

I think there's a good chance it's the exact same album ... or, even it's another album by another person who was equally fascinated by the moon landing in 1969 enough to endlessly photograph his TV screen, it would be comparable in value to "my" album ... the $30 photo album I let slip away!!!!!

The only value I can find in this sad tale is that I'm now made more aware of the value of 20th century vernacular photos and I need to expand my horizons from the 19th century to the 20th century.

But what an expensive lesson!!!!

**********

Generally, when I come across a photo album, unless it is priced very cheaply, I buy it only if I can find at least one or two unusual photos that I know I can sell to offset the cost of the entire album.

I look at the people in the portraits and see if anyone is wearing a Civil War uniform (check!), posing with an animal, especially an unusual animal (check!), posing with an American flag (my own collecting specialty ... check!) posing with a photo in his/her hand (an antique photo of a person holding an antique photo is so cool!), holding a toy (the clearer the toy, the better), etc. Even unusual jewelry warrants a second look: I have sold photos of women wearing mourning jewelry made of human hair, for example.

If the photos are run of the mill ordinary portraits, you have to look hard for that special "je ne sais quoi" in order to sell it successfully ... an indefinable quality that draws you to the photo.

Those are my methods, but there are other sellers who focus strictly on the genealogical aspect of selling photos from an album:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/4hearts/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1

I look at her listings occasionally, and notice that she has developed an interesting niche of identifying the people in her photos and selling them individually to family researchers and others based on the genealogy.

When I've culled the choice photos from albums I've purchased, I will either sell the remainder as a lot, or in this recent case, I sold an adorable photo of a child posing with a rooster to a man whose great-grandfather actually took the photo:

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Booksellers/No-Good-Deed/td-p/25878016

I then listed the remaining photos of the same photographer as a lot and the man subsequently bought those, as well.

bookthink · ‎09-12-2016

But what an expensive lesson!!!!

Indeed. Michele, this reminded me of a recent discussion we had on Joel's advice not to let nostalgia interfere with the scouting process. I came down on the side of giving nostalgia free play in the process, as long as objective attention was also paid to potential resale value - and your example is a prime one of how important it is to give nostalgia its due. Keep it in the foreground. At first glance, this album might appear to have modest value at best, especially given that the entire broadcast can be viewed on YouTube. But for those of us who watched the moon landing on our own TV's - and if you listen with your nostalgia-tuned ears - it so powerfully takes us back to that precise moment in time in a manner that a copy of the entire broadcast (without a TV framing things in still views) couldn't.

Great story, BTW.

This reminds me of a $50 ca. 1900 photo album I bought on eBay several years ago. It contained some exceptionally clear photos of early Manhattan, so clear that even those taken from a distance revealed signs of specific businesses. There was a nostaIgic feel to many of them because of much wild, undeveloped land surrounding things - even sections of Broadway hadn't been developed. I spent two days researching the photos and was able to identify specific streets, etc., and wrote a lengthy description. I started the auction at $9.99 and waited, wondered for sometime if I had burned those two days for naught. We were at a restaurant with friends the night it closed - they had, in fact, screwed up our order big time, one of those deals where everybody else had their food and we didn't (and it didn't seem to be coming anytime soon) and we were getting ready to walk out - but I agreed to wait a few more minutes because this auction was heating up and about to close. $1329! We did end up walking out, but to say the least this took the sting out of it.

dreambooks · ‎09-12-2016

A lot of interesting information here. Looks like I need to learn how to sell photos because I picked up two more photo albums today.
I bought some 50+ books in an online auction and the seller would not ship them. So i drove up from Tennessee to Iowa last Friday to pick them up. I spent the weekend visiting the thrift stores and antique malls in Des Moines and Iowa City. Yesterday in Des Moines I saw an album of photos taken from a warship in a showcase. The price is just crazy. It is priced at $3250. Anyway it might worth that price. Today I visited an antique mall in Iowa City. There is a messy booth with shelves of books and photos and old papers. I picked 2 books and 2 photo albums . One photo album is full of pictures taken by a soldier when his unit was stationed in a European country. The soldier explained in writting that these were all the photos taken during the stay. Most of them are soldiers practicing. So this might be a good buy.

shakhammer8u4s · ‎09-13-2016

Sounds like the military album should do well. Depending on content, number of photos, quality of captions, prices can range on eBay from a few hundred to a couple of thousand. A few basic things to consider telling your buyers:

1. The number of photos. If you are not willing to count them, make an educated guess

2. The number of pages. Same advice as number 1.

3. If any photos appear to be missing

4. The size range and average size of photos

5. Condition of the album/average condition of the photos.

Military albums are fairly common but most eBay auctions appear to break 3 figures. Fixed price/best offer is still your best bet. Try to figure out what unit your photographer was in and if they participated in anything significant. Scan (do not photograph) at least 5 of the best images and be prepared to offer a few more. If you are really going to get in to selling albums, subscriptions to Ancestry/Fold3/Newspapers.com pay for themselves reasonably quickly.

And to Michele--when I scanned your post and saw NASA, I was pretty sure you were going to describe the Swann's album. Ouch I've been on the lookout for something similar since I read about it awhile back. I've consigned once to Swann's but I've fared better with vernacular albums selling here, up the food chain and to institutions.

imagine.ink · ‎09-13-2016

Since many of the older BSB threads are "locked," I thought I'd place a few links here of past threads regarding selling photos. That way, we can keep relevant photo-related info more accessible!

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Booksellers/Every-picture-tells-a-story/m-p/22800087

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Booksellers/A-great-eBay-story/td-p/21855544