Soviet Photographs starting in the 30's!!!

[uscob]

Today I got loads of Pic's from a Military Archive from old Military Personal Files. Most of them are with Name, Grade, Stamp and other Details like date a.s.o.
At first a Hero of the Soviet Union: Michail Ivanov from 1953.
After I sorted them all, there are some for sale.
Yesterday I thought he looks like a Marine and as I translated the writing I saw why!
He is a Marine!
Colonel to the 120th Naval Infantry Brigade.

[uscob]

The old Type Uniform w/o Shoulder Boards.

[uscob]

Some of the "newer" pics.

[NavyFCO]

After I sorted them all, there are some for sale.

Good luck selling them! They're neat, but tough to move unfortunately (I've sold around 3000 of them.)

[Vadim K]

They're neat, but tough to move unfortunately

Indeed, they are always on Ebay for $2-3.

[Manu Dalton]

I will be interest by a few of those if you sell some.

Just drop me a PM when you will know wich one you will sell.

[uscob]

Indeed, they are always on Ebay for $2-3.

Maybe the private ones, but never saw the Military marked ones for this price, and for sure not the original ones from the 30's.

[NavyFCO]

Maybe the private ones, but never saw the Military marked ones for this price, and for sure not the original ones from the 30's.

I have. Unfortunately, the market has really been flooded with these... I think in the mid-to late-90's the archives were selling these by the handful for a pittance. I bought probably half of the ones I encountered, so I probably saw somewhere in the vicinity of 6000-8000 of these being offered during a couple year time span. Add to that the dealers I don't know and the Russian collectors who have stacks of these in Russia! It's really unfortunate that the archives released all these as it makes it tough to get a good photo when you research a group.

The value really depends on what the officers are wearing. The last batch I sold (this was about four months ago now) consisted of officers wearing Kutuzov-Suvorov-Khmelnitsky-Nevsky (one of the four, sometimes two or three) and that brought about $3 a photo. I was also able to get $2 per photo from a collector for my Navy officer photos (they seem to be tougher to find than Army ones.) I normally got $5-$10 each for my general and admiral photos, depending on time period and awards worn. Ironically, the pre-WW2 ones were the toughest to sell as most people want the photos for the image of the awards being worn, and very few of those were wearing awards. The best pre-war sellers were paratroopers, and I could normally get $3 a photo for those.

I was trying to sell the others (the "average officers") in lots of 20 photos for $25 a lot, but never had many takers. I finally sold my last batch of 1000 photos for $1400 as I recall. I was thinking that some of yours may have come from that lot as I sold them to a collector in the EU, but I don't recognize any of yours. I had initially paid $2 each for the photos (on average) so I ended up taking a slight loss in the end, but I needed the cash!

HSU photos are different - I normally see $20 each asked for those, but they rarely sell at that. $10-$15 each is normally a "saleable" price on those. I still have my collection of HSU photos, and there are some great ones in there!

Now, of course, if you happened to find someone that owned the medal group of one of the guys in your photos, then you could probably expect to get a little more... (I'd send you $30 a photo if you had any of mine!)

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Also, if you'd like to see a good example of where these all came from, here is a complete service record for a twice HSU.

http://www.forvalor.com/Ark.htm

You'll notice his photo in the beginning. All the archives people had to do was slip out the photo, and viola! Money to be made! Sometimes there were more than one photo in the service record which then would make it easier to remove them. I had up to four photos from the same guy! The photos with the slips of paper attached I believe came from the individual units. I think that several of the big "war college" type schools dumped their stocks as well, as some of the photos I've had had those markings.

Dave

[NavyFCO]

Ahhhh yes.... A photo from back in the day! I think there were about 750 photos in this stack. You know, they were fun to own. I just wish that 1) I had had room to display them, and 2) I had infinite money so I never needed to sell anything!

Dave

[Ciaran Byrne]

I too have quite a lot of these photos in my collection including pre-war right up to 1991 and although they are not valuable as such they are great to have. I initially bought them for the different uniforms but later realised that I had quite a lot of high end officers with large medal groups.

[Sturmpnr]

I probably own about 400-500 of these myself....

[Tod Rathbone]

I would be interested in pilots

From 1935-1945 only. Please let me know if any of that kind are for sale.

Thanks,

Tod