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A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#31

Post by giarc »

lisper wrote: post #4
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the article had gone into more detail about what the verification process is like.

Yeah, this. I don't see how they could possibly verify that this is actually an image of BtK when the face is so obscured and the provenance of the image so uncertain. Kagin's is being very cagey about it too: "Any qualified individual wishing to review the authentication dossier and discuss the potential acquisition of the Billy the Kid Croquet Match Tintype are welcome to contact..."

Likely coincided with knowledge about where he was living at that point in history. This also takes place after a wedding, so that likely gave some clues if they could determine who was getting married.

As well, the article mentioned that this is the first photo of him with some of his known gang members. The man to his left is quite clear, and therefore if they can identify him as an associate of Billy The Kid, perhaps that gave them more reason to suspect it was Billy.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#32

Post by sharkweek »

dogma1138 wrote: post #19
bloat wrote: post #5

You must have pretty specialised knowledge to look at that photo in the junk shop and say to yourself, "You know, that might be Billy the Kid. I should get this appraised."

Allot of people hunt for "treasures" in thrift shops, yard sales, and even auctions and then get them evaluated by more knowledgeable experts. When you buy enough "junk" that just looks old and or unique you'll eventually hit jackpot, I'm really not sure that the guy who bought the picture knew exactly it's value or it's historical significance, he just might had enough experience to estimate that it's more likely th…

My wife is a thrift store / garage sale junkie and it always goes one of two ways.

1) We end up with a junk piece of furniture that sits in our garage for months while she tries to either sell it for a few bucks or makes a run back to the thrift store to drop it off (majority of the time)

or

2) She ends up finding a piece worth hundreds (sometimes thousands) that make it all worth it. She recently found a Paul McCobb table she restored and sold for 700 dollars that she bought for $15 (small % of the time but worth it)

Kinda sounds a bit like venture capital...

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#33

Post by dogma1138 »

pgrote wrote: post #9

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around.

Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost.

Time capsules are now becoming more and more important (including us sending one to Mars) because if we blow ourselves up or encounter a calamity that will erase much of modern technology we will lose more data in that instant than all the data lost to history before that.

Most modern storage media will not last a century even under good conditions, yet alone under conditions that we've found many historical manuscripts and objects of significance so it's quite important for us to develop a high-density, long term media which can store current information in ways that will be fairly simple to access, micro-film was a good candidate at one time but the information density was too small, so allot of people are working on more high density storage media including crystals, and even encoding allot of information into DNA, if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#34

Post by shawabawa3 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #27
lmkg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might give them a tip if I'm a regular customer, but it's not as obligatory as tipping waiters. I think it is customary to tip the dealer when gambling, though.

Tipping is very dependent on the local customs, tipping a waiter in Germany for example (especially in the more rural areas, or traditional restaurants) will be somewhere between unexpected to outright insulting. Tipping dealers in UK casinos is actually forbidden by the 'Gaming Board' (gambling commission) to discourage "cheating" since they believe that if dealers might get a cut of the winnings they might be incli…

> Tipping dealers in UK casinos is actually forbidden by the 'Gaming Board' (gambling commission) to discourage "cheating" since they believe that if dealers might get a cut of the winnings they might be inclined to stack the odds in the player's favor.

Are you sure about this? I've played poker in UK casinos where tipping was very common

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#35

Post by pavel_lishin »

dogma1138 wrote: post #33
pgrote wrote: post #9

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around. Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost. Time capsules are now becoming m…

> if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time.

I do like the idea that the information would be self-propagating, but who'd think to look in the DNA of some trees?

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#36

Post by AlexEatsKittens »

brudgers wrote: post #23

[Off Topic] I can't help but think this will help me win the internet. Here is a photograph of Billy the Kid playing croquet. Therefore my argument is valid.

Is reddit starting to migrate to HN or something? I've been seeing a lot of these types of comments recently.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#37

Post by valarauca1 »

fn42 wrote: post #18
pgrote wrote: post #9

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

"Hard drive from junk shop found to be from an old facebook server" I do wonder how digital archiving will work in the future. Hopefully something better than "the archive.org volunteers decided to archive it"

You tell archive.org how often to archive a URL. So its not really up to their volunteers but the general population.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#38

Post by dogma1138 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #35
dogma1138 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around. Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost. Time capsules are now becoming m…

> if you can turn an entire forest into a time capsule you might be able to preserve knowledge for a very very long time. I do like the idea that the information would be self-propagating, but who'd think to look in the DNA of some trees?

Future humans that knew about it, future humans that had to rediscover DNA, evolved intelligent racoons, Eloi, Morlocks, aliens take your pick.

The idea is just to have some way to ensure that enough information survives in persistent forms, you can store "important" (for scientific advancement) stuff in various types of media which is progressively harder to access and gets more and more dense, and eventually store everything and it's mother in DNA or anything similar.

As things go if in 50 years we lose Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Amazon/Kindle we might be on our way back to the stoneage.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#40

Post by dogma1138 »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #34
dogma1138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping is very dependent on the local customs, tipping a waiter in Germany for example (especially in the more rural areas, or traditional restaurants) will be somewhere between unexpected to outright insulting. Tipping dealers in UK casinos is actually forbidden by the 'Gaming Board' (gambling commission) to discourage "cheating" since they believe that if dealers might get a cut of the winnings they might be incli…

> Tipping dealers in UK casinos is actually forbidden by the 'Gaming Board' (gambling commission) to discourage "cheating" since they believe that if dealers might get a cut of the winnings they might be inclined to stack the odds in the player's favor. Are you sure about this? I've played poker in UK casinos where tipping was very common

Yes there are games in which you cannot tip, in all others the tip doesn't go directly to the dealer and there is an official process to distribute it, and even that's is restricted.

"Licence condition 10.1.1 Tipping – personal licence holders All non-remote casino operating licences 1 Licensees must only permit tipping of staff holding personal licences where a tronc system is operated; that is to say, where all tips are pooled and distributed amongst the employees concerned. A separate tronc may be operated for each of a number of categories of licensed staff."

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/pdf/Latest-LCCP-and-Ext...

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/nimmanual/nim02941.htm

Edit:

It's seems that all tipping was universally disallowed until 2005 (haven't been in a UK casino for about 10 years)

"In the rest of the world, tipping the dealer for success is the norm. In Britain it has become legal (on implementation of the 2005 Gaming Act) and now it is acceptable. It is still however not as commonplace as in other places in Europe or America."

Beyond that it's subject to the 2005 gaming act and the tornc and personal license holders schemes.

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