E-Photo
Issue #14  4/11/2000
 
Fisherman Dag Sets Record For eBay Photo Images; and The Nearly $64,000 Question Is?

By Alex Novak

In case you missed it, long-time collector George Rinhart recently purchased a half-plate daguerreotype of a fisherman with pipe-in-mouth, rod, reel and creel for $63,655 on eBay.  He bought it for his personal collection. 

Donna Coates, who was bidding for someone else (reportedly living in Eastern Connecticut, hmmmm), underbid him.  A number of other Daguerreian Society members and dag dealers were much lower down on the bidding totem pole.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.