Selling 'Vintage' Black and White Prints ... some advice?

[Keith]

I would like to run this idea past a few heads here.

The vintage negatives I’ve scanned lately have contained some very appealing images … many shot in the thirties and twenties. I was actually contacted by a couple of people who saw these photos posted in the gallery asking how they could get copies of a couple they particularly liked … for these individuals I just sent them the files so they could print them digitally themselves.

These scanning and restoration projects take a lot of time and effort and so far have virtually been done for love, as the fascination in unearthing these treasures has been reward in itself … to a point!

I’m now wondering if it’s feasible to sell high quality prints of some of the best of these scans to re-coup the costs of my archiving efforts and maybe make a small profit. I can get the rights to do this from the owners of the negatives if I wish, provided they are comfortable with my selections.

I use an Epson R2400 that with Ilford Gallery Smooth Pearl or Ilford Gold Fibre Silk is capable of producing a black and white print from A4 to A3+ quite worthy of framing and hanging on a wall.

Questions:

What would be a fair price to ask for such a print?

Can these top shelf inkjet papers be rolled and sent in mailing tubes, or do they need to be kept flat?

And last but not least … do you think this is a viable idea?

 

[ChrisN]

Keith - have a look at shorpy.com for an indication of what some similar archives are selling prints for.

I especially love their 4x5 'chromes!

 

[monochromejrnl]

Keith - great idea and I'm sure there will be lots of interest in prints of those images. However, be careful not to market them as 'vintage' prints - as 'vintage' has a very specific meaning in the collector market that means that the prints were made by the original photographer at around the time the negative was created. Best of luck with your endeavor. As for pricing - I'd multiple my cost to create print (materials/licensing fees from the negative owners) and multiple it my a factor of 2.

From - http://www.hackelbury.co.uk/read...questions.html

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What is a vintage print? Within the photography market, there is often a premium attached to vintage prints. The definition of vintage is not quite uniform, but in its strictest version, the photographer should have photographed and printed from that negative within one year. As we get further from the negative date, the window of ‘vintage’ can often be expanded to cover five or even ten years. The price for a vintage photograph can be about four to six times as much as the price for a modern or later print. In the case however of Andre Kertesz’s Chez Mondrian, 1926, a vintage print sold in the early 1990’s for $250,000, while you can still purchase a modern print for about $8,000-$10,000.[/FONT]

 

[hipsterdufus]

The hippy in me says that it might be nice of you to release these images into the Internet at full resolution, since they are someone else's work. You could then apply some sort of creative commons licensing.

Of course, at the same time, I realize that you spent a good deal of time scanning and restoring these negatives. In reality, I would charge a modest profit over actual costs (say 50%?) until you feel that you've recouped the amount (in dollars) of time you spent scanning/retouching the negatives. Then release the images into the Internet using creative commons licensing.

My humble opinion.