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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3194485, member: 19463&quot;]Yes, that is the problem some of us have.&nbsp; I have photographs made many decades ago by a &#039;art&#039; photographer who hogged a huge view camera miles from the nearest road to take some little waterfall.&nbsp; Today the prints of those images are irreplaceable even if we still have the negatives since they don&#039;t make paper like the once did.&nbsp; I have albumen prints from c.1870 by big name photographers that have not faded in the thirty years I have abused them on my walls.&nbsp;&nbsp; I have 8x10&quot; contact prints in equal shape but only from the 1970&#039;s that are doing well now but no one will care about them in another 100 years when the photographer (me) is long gone.&nbsp; At what point does our ownership of such items turn into the &#039;curatorship&#039; we discuss for our coins?&nbsp; Paper items become antiquities faster than silver coins. </p><p>Years ago I visited an artsy-craftsy shoppe that was selling dozens of versions of the image below made into note card sets, paperweights, fancy frames and a wide range of prices but all over $10.&nbsp; The original c.1850 hand colored daguerreotype was there in the case, too, so I asked the price.&nbsp; The shopkeeper said she had so many&nbsp; copies so she had no use for the original and asked $10.&nbsp; It was the only thing in the shop that was not her artwork so obviously not worth much.&nbsp; I sometimes wonder how many of the copies she sold to decorate offices and homes and how many of them still exist.&nbsp; I am the current caretaker of this little boy. I value his being an original even though he had no value added by the art lady to whom he had outlived his usefulness.&nbsp; </p><p><img src="http://www.pbase.com/dougsmit/image/47057870/medium.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>I encourage the copies.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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