Vintage sports photography was once a somewhat obscure pursuit, belonging to a class of niché collectibles.
The community was rife with knowledge and detailed documentation, but otherwise largely unknown by the broader collector world.
That changed in 1996, when Christie's held an auction of photographs of early baseball players, many of which were taken by Charles Conlon, the most famous baseball photographer of his era.
Among the images were depictions of Ty Cobb sliding into third base, a photo of Babe Ruth and a portrait of Honus Wagner. The 17,000 photographs — originally from the archives of Baseball Magazine — were uncovered the prior year in a Washington basement.
A September 1996 account from the New York Times details the shock of Christie's consultant Donald Flanagan upon first evaluating the massive cache of photos.
''This type of unsigned photograph simply was not available in any quantity until now,'' Flanagan told the Times. "'But now, unsigned action photographs and those of uniformed players may begin to catch on with collectors."
Nine years later, Henry Yee, Khyber Oser and Marshall Fogel published "A Portrait of Baseball Photography," a seminal book which created the classification system used widely today (designating the distinctions between Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 photos).
The most widely known and relevant of these distinctions is Type 1, referring to a photograph developed from the original image within two years of its production.
In 2023, The Athletic published a story on "vintage sports photography collecting," bringing the hobby even further into the mainstream.
Then came 2024.
Suddenly, it seemed like every auction house with the slightest interest in vintage sports memorabilia was unloading massive amounts of Type 1 photos, slabbed by PSA.
Thanks to data provided by Altan Insights in their 2024 Q1 Sports Collectibles Market Report, it's evident that there has, in fact, been a flood of sales. While many are aware of the headline-grabbers, such as the Mickey Mantle image used for his 1951 Bowman Rookie card, which sold for an auction-record $843,750 in April 2024, the rest of the pack remains shockingly cheap, despite exorbitant growth supply.
The report found that Goldin, Heritage, REA and Memory Lane are on pace to sell 73% more Type 1 photo lots in Q1 2024 than 2023 as a whole, while average prices declined 47% over the same period.
According to Altan, the average price of a Type 1 photo sold at Goldin, Heritage, Memory Lane and REA has declined each year since 2021, from nearly $7,000 to below $2,000 in Q1 2024. Altan's report explains: "Average prices have fallen, but there is evidence of high-end sales increasing in frequency, suggesting that the broad uptick in interest is filtering into high quality assets."
As with many emerging asset classes, which see a pop of enthusiasm and over-exposure, it's unsurprising to see Type 1 photos undergo an uneasy and tumultuous entry into the permanent mainstream hobby ecosystem.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.