Thoughts On Photo Duplicates

[james127]

A few weeks ago, I bought a WWII German photo postcard on eBay from a seller with a 100% positive rating. The picture was sold as an original and the seller included "All our items are originals and no fake or replicas" in the description. Last night, I'm looking again and I see the exact same photo that I bought 2 weeks ago.

My question is, how common or likely is it to come across a collection that has duplicates of a photo? The photo is of a German soldier and his wife, so I would think that it's reasonable to assume that they would have originally had multiple copies made to send out to friends and family. I just don't know how common it is to find them together. Also, is there a way to authenticate photos other than shining a black light on them?

Thanks!

[james127]

Also, to be fair, the seller does offer a 14 day money back guarantee and the photo that is being sold now has some marks and stains that are different from the one that I have.

[Admiraal]

I have seen it a few times. I got doubles myself. Some even differ in quality.

[Hank C.]

Very common, as a matter of fact. Photos that turned out well were reproduced as other guys in the unit would want some. I had the same thing with a KM album I have. A seller on e-bay had many of the same photos, they had apparently been made available to all (or many) of the sailors on the ship.

best
Hank

[chrischa]

Very common, as a matter of fact. Photos that turned out well were reproduced as other guys in the unit would want some. I had the same thing with a KM album I have. A seller on e-bay had many of the same photos, they had apparently been made available to all (or many) of the sailors on the ship.

best
Hank

Similar experience and pretty much what I was going to write.

[ss3]

agree and have a collection from one Waffen-SS soldier. In that collection were multiple copies of some of his photos - done as postcards - all have the photographer's embossed stamp and all identical (one of the images had 6 un-used copies - do not know how many others he would have sent to friends and family?). Four of the images were also done in larger 8 x 10 format - for framing on the wall.

Guess the photographer's shop would have done a deal price for multiple copies? Certainly looks the case in this instance.

[james127]

Awesome. Appreciate the feedback. I was just wanting to make sure that something weird wasn't going on.

[clestuff]

Original prints were often made from the negitives

[TorpedoLos]

I've seen the same phenomenon in photos held by crewmembers of the same U-boat crew - in collections that came to market years apart.

I will say, however, that I wish there were an easy way to filter out repro photos on eBay - as I have no interest in acquiring them. eBay - or at least the searches I'm running - has more repro photos being offered by the same handful of sellers than there are original photos. I see the originals of these photos sold at eBay or some of the larger auction houses, and within a few weeks repro photos of the same image find their way on eBay.

[feldpost 58]

Hi,

Me too!
I have several groupings of paperwork from Wehrmacht members which feature four or five copies of the same photograph, presumably for friends and family distribution.
One group I have for a Customs official has ten passport sized photographs, one is actually used on his ID; and the rest were loose within the grouping.
Multiple copies of a photograph were often made, and it is not surprising they turn up in different collections and locations frequently.

Best wishes,

John.