What old photos are valuable?

As a collection, photos are very different from other collections, in addition to artistic value and antique cultural relics value, there are also image historical materials value. For a long time, people only pay attention to the value of image content, the interpretation of image content and the historical value of image, and basically ignore the antique cultural relics value of old photos, not to mention the visual artistic value of photos.

Abroad, photography collection has a long history. After the 1970s, the international image collection market warmed up, and photography auction came into being. Many famous museums have set up special exhibition halls for photographic art. In 2003, the Orsay Museum in Paris, France collected more than 50,000 photographs. In new york, London, San Francisco and other big cities, photography auctions are held regularly every year. In 2002, an old photo with a shooting date of 1825 was purchased by the National Library of France for $398,000. The original photo of the famous French photographer Robert Duval Si Nuo's masterpiece "Kiss in front of the City Hall" more than 50 years ago was sold for $200,000. In February 2006, Moonlight on the Pond, shot by American photographer edward steichen, was sold at Sotheby's in new york for more than 2.9 million dollars.

Experts pointed out that at present, due to the maturity of overseas markets, China collectors are indifferent to old photos, and there is a big price gap between home and abroad. Some foreign collectors have been collecting old photos in China for many years.

Although China's image collection is still on the side, since it officially entered the room in autumn of 2006, after more than two years of cultivation and development, it has established nine categories: representative works of important photographers in China, representative works of China's photography history, representative works of famous foreign artists, artistic photography (also known as artistic photography), contemporary image artworks created by photography media, and old photos of antique cultural relics (famous images in history, images with historical value and collection value).