Tintypes, ferrotypes, whatever you call them can be worth just a few bucks to tens of thousands of dollars. On 25 June 2011, the original Billy the Kid tintype photo goes t auction, with an estimated sale of $300,000 to $400,000.
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William H. Bonney |
Tintypes, as they are commonly, and erroneously known, are sheet iron painted black with a photo on them. The process involves putting a wet photo sensitive emulsion on the plate and them exposing them in a camera to get the image.
Previously tintypes were very commonly made from the late 1850s all the way to the end of the century and even a few decades beyond, depending on location and situation. By the 1980s less than a dozen hobbyists and experimenters were making tintypes. Around this time tintypes became collectible.
What’s a tintype worth? It depends. They are collected by subject, by size, by era and by the beauty or rarity of the image. Presently Civil War images are the most collected although not necessarily the most expensive. A cased image of an unknown Union infantry trooper with no weapons or attribution might fetch between $100 to $150 depending on the type of case and the condition of the image.
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| An original Tintype Civil war era ¼ plate image Note the Photographic equipment on the lower left side of the image |
Correspondingly, an image of a soldier with a plethora of brandished weapons, or a confederate image, or a non-standard armed soldier with a bowie could top $1000 in the recent past. Remember it’s about supply and demand. The number of Civil War images is limited and demand is up. In come the fakers and destroy history and defraud buyers.
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| An original Tintype Civil war era image Note the shot gun and the D guard bowie knife |
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| An original Tintype Civil war era image? Note the model 1849 Colt Pocket gun and side knife and rare neckerchief. But there are a couple of other things in this image that seem to be wrong. can you spot them? |
In the 1980s few stalwart hobbyist and reenactors made period style tintypes as portraits of other reenactors, no intent to make fakes. One of those early photographers is Wendell R. Decker, who takes every pain to ensure that his recreations will not be taken as historical photos or worse at the hands of unscrupulous dealers, who might sell a reproduction as original Civil War era photography.
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| A very recent image by Mr.Decker of Misters Tyler Gibson & Rocky Kilpatrick , Reenactors |
Crooked dealers and now crooked photographers are working together to defraud buyers with faked tintypes that are either reprints of original photos or new, original photos set up to fool a collector. Wendell Decker uses Japanned sheet aluminum on his photos, something that had never been used previously to thwart fakers and crooked dealers. “You see”, says Decker, “a magnet will stick to an original tintype, but not on one of mine”. He also marks the back of his images.
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| Mr.Decker uses aluminum sheet for his tintypes and boldly signs them on the back, so as to readily identify them as modern. |
Decker is determined to keep fakers from using honestly made reproductions like his from ending up on EBay or in the hands of crooked dealers being sold as original Civil War. We need more photographers like Decker. He was one of those original less than a dozen reenactor photographers I told you about. Now there are hundreds of photographers making tintypes, most all of which are honest and there are tens of thousands of dealers, most of which are honest, but unless you get acquainted with tintypes and buckle down with first-hand knowledge, you just might get taken.
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| Wendell R. Decker's assistant Suzy Chambers McGill |
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| Now this is an image that even tough there were originals similar to this they are extremely rare and on today's market could fetch high prices at auction. This is why it is crucial to be able to identify original from modern images. |
See Part Two – how to spot fakes, hopefully. Coming soon!
that double barrel shotgun looks like a box-action breakover... not invented until 1875. tell me more.
ReplyDeleteIt's really blurry, but there are hammers present and I don't see the break toggle, so it's probably a muzzle loader and not a breech loader. Even so, there were pin fire cartridge shotguns produced in the 1840s, so a break action doesn't preclude antebellum manufacture.
ReplyDeleteOf greater concern is the plethora of tintypes on auction sites such as eBay which are "reprints" on ferrotypes. That is to say, they are using existing original images and transferring them to tin type blanks. That doesn't even include the huge amount of outright fakes being produced on metal blanks. All I can say at this point, is buyer beware. One red flag is if a vendor suddenly has a huge number of super-rare images that appear out of nowhere and is not a known collector. Also be familiar with images from major on line collections such as the Civil War images seen on the Library of Congress. Many of those are one of a kind, so copies should not be encountered.