Early Aviation Photos, ca. 1908
GUEST: This collection come from a friend of mine. He used to deliver newspapers for the Wright Brothers and he also used to have his bicycles worked on from the Wright Brothers 'cause they had a bicycle shop in Dayton.
APPRAISER: Okay. So he presumably had a great interest in aviation himself because he managed to accumulate a very large set of pictures dealing with hot air balloons and early airplanes. I've selected three photographs from amongst the 40 or so that are in the collection that I think illustrate very well why the collection is important. This photograph shows the landing of the first airplane to cross the English Channel in a flight from France to where it landed in Dover, England.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: The pilot was a very famous French pilot named Blériot. His plane was very fragile, it occasionally crashed. The plane that made the first crossing was transferred from the landing strip to Selfridges Department store in London where it remained on display for a number of years.
GUEST: So this plane is there?
APPRAISER: This plane was at Selfridges.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: Different pilots tried larger and small sized engines which often caused the plane to fall apart. And he was forced to strengthen the design of the plane and use different materials that would support the larger engines. The plane was in use up until about World War One.
GUEST: That's a long time.
APPRAISER: Yeah. The third photograph is of the Wright Brother's plane in foreground and another plane, modeled after the Wright Brothers behind it. Most of the photographs in your collection were taken by a picture agency. We don't know the name of the photographer but the picture agency has its stamp on the back of the photographs and it's a French picture agency which presumably distributed the photographs to other newspapers throughout the world and that's how they came to be in Dayton, Ohio. On the back you see the stamp, it's called "Rapid" and it says reproduction is prohibited, that they're copywrited and it gives the address on the Rue Montmartre in Paris.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: Do you have any idea what the value on this collection is?
GUEST: No.
APPRAISER: The photograph in this example of the Blériot plane landing in Dover, I would estimate would bring between $1,500 and $3,500 at auction.
GUEST: Just that one picture?
APPRAISER: Just that one alone.
GUEST: Wow!
APPRAISER: The photograph in the center that depicts the crashing of the Blériot airplane would probably be valued at between $1,000 and $1,500 at auction.
GUEST: That's quite a bit.
APPRAISER: The one of the Wright Brothers, also, between $1,500 and $2,500. If these were brought to auction, in its entirety, the 40 or so pictures that you have the estimate would be between $7,000 $10,000.
GUEST: Wow. That's pretty good. I was estimating maybe $200.
$7,000 - $10,000 Auction
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