*

One day while browsing at my local second-hand store, I came across a box of old photos. The earliest were the large cardboard photos depicting people in their presumed home city in Europe going about their lives. There were a few dozen or so photos of that period. Some showed dour looking people in a Jewish graveyard in the Roaring ’90s. Not too terribly exciting or popular in the photo resale market but, the whole box was only $3.

There were names written in pencil with odd hard to pronounce names. The second period of photos were paper photos taken in some Central American country with the same hard to pronounce names penciled onto the back. Again, not too interesting – people doing things, get-togethers, kids, people eating. Nothing that I could get any money from a resale. The third period was clearly in the USA. Some color now. Prosperous looking people going about their lives. Welcome to America. Same names on the back.

I can usually get a few bucks each for a photo unless it’s of a famous person. Then, whammo, the price skyrockets. Years back, a buddy found a John Wilkes Booth daguerreotype. He still has it in his collection. Not for sale. I could imagine it would fetch multiple thousands of dollars.

I don’t know what people do with all the old photographs they buy. Maybe they use them in art projects. A bygone era study in black and white.

A few weeks after my purchase, curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the odd names on the photos. I found a woman in Scottsdale, Arizona with the same spelling via an online white pages search. I called her up, introduced myself and told her what I’d found. I mangled the pronunciation of the names and she corrected me. I knew I had the right family. She told me that she once had family in the Boston area. She asked what I wanted for them. I told her I wanted a new roof. In the end, I mailed out her lost family photos and got back a nice thank you letter. I lost the $3 plus the cost of postage on the deal and the roof cost $7,000.