Yesterday I was inching my way through the Ampex listings on eBay when I discovered a photograph of the raw shell of the stage before the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958. As some of you know, I'm a huge fan of the Festival (IIRC, this will be my 17th year attending).
I have several books on the early days and I'd never seen anything like this. At $19.97, I scooped it right up.
Afterwards, I began to wonder exactly what I'd bought and took a closer look at the listing.
Turns out that this is a 8x10 from the Examiner archive and not a reprint from a scan. The back has all the particulars in case it was to be used in an article in the future.
Of course, this is what the eBay listing states and I'll have a better idea when I get it in my hands.
So, being a lover of B&W photos (especially old ones), I decided to look into this a little further.
Turns out, there are a number of newspapers who are selling off their photo archives. Some are simply their copies of publicity pictures of which there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) still in existence. But lots of these are prints from staff photographers which make them quite rare if not unique.
I guessing that these physical archives are being sold for whatever they can get after they're been scanned. Especially after papers have been sold to corporations who don't give a damn about history and are downsizing the buildings they used to occupy from basement to penthouse.
So, here's a link to just one of them. There are thousands of photos so be sure and filter what you look at.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BS-PHOTO-bbj-241-Dizzy-Gillespie-Jazz-Musician-/390624826102?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item5af30dd2f6Oops, here's a link to the photo I grabbed;
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350721858341
