I am including this article from Christopher Brandon who has done a fantastic job of tracking the history of the Conlon Photographic Archive; from 1904 when Charles Conlon began taking photographs of baseball players to 2016 when 7,462 remaining images (of over 20,000 originals) was sold at Auction to an anonymous bidder for $1.8 million. This article is taking the place of my previous attempts to do the same.
Tracking Down the Charles Conlon Collection
by Christopher Brandon, November 4, 2019
In my opinion there is no better or more iconic sports photographer than Charles Conlon. His images are timeless, and he captured one of the most important eras of baseball. In nearly 40 years of photography, Conlon captured over 7,000 images, and I am willing to bet that is a conservative estimate. Nonetheless, a collection of 7,462 original negatives of Conlon’s work was sold through Heritage Auctions back in 2016 from a private collector.
Now, a private collector seems like an odd place for something of this caliber and historical significance to be found, so how did it get there? The story is as interesting as it is frustrating, and certainly adds to the discussion of what should be up for public purchase and what should be placed in museums. So, we are going to be taking a look at the Conlon collection’s historical pathway, and discuss the question of personal responsibility in terms of items of historical significance.
Charles Conlon was the photographer for the New York Evening Telegram and Spaldings baseball guides between 1904 and 1942. However, his work was used by the Sporting News, in advertisements, numerous newspapers, and were also used for trading cards. He was not the only sports photographer of the era, but he was certainly the most prominent, and his photographs speak for themselves. Charles Conlon had a great eye for getting the best shots and had a knack for being at the right place at the right time. If you have seen my video about Ty Cobb stealing third base, you will know exactly what I am talking about.
Like most people, Charles Conlon did not anticipate his future calling, but he was certainly, once again, in the right place at the right time. He was an amateur photographer who took photos as a hobby, but nothing suggests he had any ambitions of pursuing photography full time.[1] Nonetheless, in 1904, while working as a proofreader for the New York Telegram it was suggested to him by his editor that he take a camera to New York’s ball parks to capture some shots.[2] It was this singular suggestion that put Conlon on a pathway to becoming the preeminent photographer of early 20th century baseball, capturing the likes of Christy Matthewson, Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and too many others to name.
Like many other items of historical significance, it takes some time for their importance to be realized. History is funny that way, but it is why I subscribe to filmmaker David Hoffman’s mantra that “ordinary is extraordinary.” Essentially that history is always in the making and just because something seems insignificant now, does not mean that it will not have significant in the future. This is also true in the case of Charles Conlon and his photography.
You are probably asking yourself, if his work was so good, then why was it underrated for so long, right? This is not an easy question to answer, and I am not sure if any one answer could satisfy the question. However, I am inclined to believe that it was because his contributions to society were available in everyday life that is a key reason for this. People tend to take every day occurrences for granted because we are distracted by the big, the bold, and the fascinating. It sometimes takes time to realize the value of things that seem rudimentary.
For all intents and purposes, Conlon remained relatively underappreciated for nearly 50 years. It would not be until around 1990 when the Sporting News discovered their treasure trove of Conlon’s work tucked away “in the morgues of the Sporting News offices.”[3] There they found over 8,000 negatives of his work, and people began to realize just how many significant events this one man had captured for us to enjoy indefinitely. Moreover, it was realized just how close he brought his viewers to the action.
According to Steve Gietschier, who started working at the Sporting News in 1986, when the “collection” was found, it was in complete disarray. Steve said it was so chaotic you would be hard-pressed to even categorize it as a collection. He said they were all sitting in a filing cabinet outside of the vault used to store the Sporting News’ significant items. The vault was apparently so full that they opted to leave the cabinet out where even visitors could come in and handle them. This was how little Conlon’s work was thought of over time.
Conlon was always there close to the action and he had a way of snapping photos that gave observers the sense that they were a part of the action. It is also said that his photos had a unique way of “channeling the viewer’s attention directly to the player’s facial expression.”[4] I believe that this is why his portraits are so captivating. Most portraits are relatively boring in my opinion, but Conlon had a way of capturing his subject’s emotions in a way that makes them just as interesting as their action-shot counterparts. You can pretty much look at a Conlon picture and know that it is a Conlon photo even without any context. It is quite amazing!
It is said that over time Conlon resorted to getting rid of images simply because he didn’t have the room for them in his house.[5] Nonetheless, sometime between 1942 and his death in 1945, Conlon, whose house was stuffed to the gills with all of his negatives and plates, sold his negatives to the Sporting News. However, even Gietschier could not find a bill of sale or anything, so it is not even known how much, if anything at all, was paid for the items. However, they did the right thing, and hired conservator Constance McCabe to make prints of the old, delicate negatives.[6] The results blew away McCabe who was awed at the artistry of Conlon’s photography. She was so excited she shared the news with her brother, Neal (an avid baseball fan), which led to the 1993 publication of the book Baseball’s Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon.[7] There were so many photographs and the book was such a hit that the duo created a sequel to the book The Big Show: Charles M. Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball Photographs.[8]
However, even before that book was published, the Sporting News released a 330-card set in 1991 that showcased Conlon’s work called “The Conlon Collection.” The following year the Sporting News was approached by a small card company called Megacards of Fairfield, Iowa. Though they had never produced on a set-level scale, they were intrigued by the Conlon collection. Megacards and the Sporting News agreed on a 4 year deal that was supposed to contain a 330 card set for each year. The sets did well the first couple years, but like most other baseball cards, took a hit during the strike. Therefore, in 1995 Megacards only released series 1 of the set that consisted of only 110 cards. In all there were 1,430 cards produced for the Conlon Collection series with 330 of those being produced by The Sporting News, and the remaining being produced by Megacards.
If you are not familiar with the Conlon Collection sets, they are fantastic! The photography is phenomenal, and the back of each card showcases a significant event of that player’s career. The sets are also one of the earlier sets to include autographs as 20,000 packs from the 1992 release offered autograph inserts from the likes of Johnny Mize, Bob Feller, Bobby Doerr, Enos Slaughter, Johnny VanderMeer, Hal Newhouser, and Marty Marion.[9]
So far so good, right? We have the collection found, it is undergoing restoration, and cards and books being made to honor Charles Conlon and his contributions to history and baseball. Well… I wish things could continue to go in this direction, but life unfortunately doesn’t always go that way. Which brings us to the next step in the collection’s journey, and an unfortunate one.
The Sporting News was sold by Times Mirror to Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft), and from there it would be sold to the American City Business Journals (ACBJ) in 2006. Originally, the Sporting News was to remain in place in St. Louis, but when the execs at ACBJ changed their minds, the offices were moved to North Carolina. Before the move, the Sporting News sold off its entire photographic archive, including the Conlon collection, to John Rogers in 2010. Perhaps you have heard of him: Rogers is the Arkansas entrepreneur who shelled out $1.62 million for a PSA 5 T206 Honus Wagner in 2008.
Rogers owned a photo archiving business called Rogers Photo Archive. Essentially what they did was make deals with the owners of photographic materials, the items were shipped to him in North Little Rock, Arkansas where his company cleaned and restored the prints. They took the cleaned prints and scanned them at 300 dots per inch (dpi), before returning a hard drive to the publication or owner as a completed archive. The company kept the original prints stored in the Rogers archive where he then created prints that were sold to the public via eBay. The Rogers company would basically put in the contract that they now owned the photos in exchange for their digitizing services. [10]
However, the Conlon collection is a bit different in that Rogers owned the images outright. He went to work with the collection creating “museum quality prints”[11] that are available for public sale, but also intended to “monetize the rights through the licensing of the images.”[12] Additionally, for what he deemed as the “150 most-memorable” images, he is creating a line of Platinum-Palladium prints.
According to the Library of Congress, “The platinum printing process was popular in the late 19th century. It used platinum and/or palladium salts instead of silver as the light sensitive material. These prints are characterized by their ability to reproduce a long scale of tonal values. It is a very permanent image, and was highly valued for this reason. Later the process was appreciated more for its aesthetic qualities, and became favored among art photographers. It is usually characterized by soft, gray tonalities, but it is possible to change the color of the print during development or by toning the finished print.”[13] That sounds pretty sweet to me!
In any case, I do not see any issues with buying a collection in order to get profits, and it seems like his company is adept at preserving photographic imagery and negatives. However, it would be other issues that cause alarm in the case of John Rogers that will take us to the next stop of the Conlon collection’s journey. So, let’s take a little closer look at John Rogers.
Rogers’ photo archival business concept was attractive to newspapers who had to weigh the options of either paying their staff to digitally archive or sending it over to sending them over to a local historical society. While these are arguably the safest options for such an endeavor, most newspapers had to think about the man-hour and equipment costs to do it themselves, or hand it over to a historical society who are often just as strapped for personnel and resources as the newspapers themselves. This made a company like Rogers Archival a premium option. Rogers offered them something they pretty much could not accomplish themselves.[14]
Unfortunately, what Rogers promised to deliver would oftentimes go unfulfilled. It seems that the shadow side of his business ventures ended up with a bright light shone on it as the accusations and law suits began piling up around 2014. Rogers found himself in quite a mess that compounded pretty quickly.
Rogers kind of took the collectibles and photography worlds by surprise. For the most part, people were suspicious of him from the get-go as he came out of obscurity at the age of 35 to buy that T206 Honus Wagner.[15] Then he turned around and started buying up all of these newspaper archives. That kind of money does not generally come out of obscurity. Their suspicions were not unwarranted, and over time complaints about shady business practices and illegal activity began to mount until he wound up getting federal attention. He had his “home and businesses… raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into bank fraud and counterfeit sports memorabilia accusations.”[16]
By 2015, Rogers was facing over a dozen lawsuits in excess of $90 million all together.[17] Over 20 newspapers filed lawsuits against Rogers Archival. Grievances ranged from not fulfilling agreements, to partially fulfilling agreements, to delivering archive materials “to unknown third parties and selling some of the material on eBay.com.”[18] However, it must be remembered that in the agreements these papers made with Rogers, they agreed that Rogers Archival would maintain control of the images as payment for the archiving process, and would then give the owner a percentage of the profits, at least that is what Rogers claimed.[19]
In addition to being a photo archivist, Rogers was also a sports memorabilia dealer which was another business venture that has left Rogers in disgrace. To make a long story short, in 2017 Rogers admitted in a plea deal that he carried out a fraud scheme between 2009 and 2014 through both his Rogers Archival and his Sports Card Plus.[20] It is a muddy mess, but we will try to unpack this simply and quickly.
Rogers ultimately ended up in court, and admitted that he would forge fake contracts to give the illusion that he had secured “certain collections of sports memorabilia and newspaper photographs.”[21] He did this in order to trick investors into investing into his company. He also admitted that he had sold fake sports memorabilia that he had either created himself or altered to feign their authenticity. He used much of these profits and collateral in order to secure loans such as a $100,000 loan he secured from an investor using a fake Heisman Trophy.[22] In all, it is estimated that he received around $4 million from various investors and financial institutions by using these fake contracts and counterfeit memorabilia.[23]
I am sure you are probably asking what this has to do with the Conlon collection, so let me explain. Rogers had been neck deep in legal battles for a few years, and has to fund this somehow, not to mention that it is estimated that he is “facing $50 million in creditor and investor claims.”[24] Well, the judge who was overseeing his case in court gave Rogers the green light to sell off the Conlon collection of glass-plate negatives. According to the receiver Michael McAfee, who was appointed by the court to oversee and arrange the sale, the proceeds will go to pay off Rogers’ creditors.[25]
Ultimately, Rogers was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his sports memorabilia and fraud endeavors. An extremely light sentence for a 44 year old con man who spent a decade defrauding people. He made a plea deal on one count of wire fraud which in itself has a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.[26] He was free on bond as his sentence pended until he was found continuing to sell fake sports memorabilia even after making the plea deal.[27]
It is highly unlikely that much of this money will be recouped as he duped countless people. He owes Mary Brace, owner of the George Brace Collection, $780,000 alone for a breach of contract judgement.[28] Mary sold him the collection in 2012 for $1.35 million, but filed a lawsuit in 2014 when Rogers missed am $85,000 installment.[29] However, she is just one in a laundry list of people to whom he owes significant amounts of money. Not to mention that the 27 boxes of negatives from the Brace collection were seized by the FBI and auctioned for $46,000 in 2016.[30]
The Conlon collection went to Heritage Auctions with a starting bid of $250,000 on August 27, 2016, but with 23 bids that number skyrocketed to $1,792,500.00. The winning bidder? He or she remains anonymous. That’s right! No one seems to know who owns it or where it is. This is unfortunate. I am hoping that it is safe and secure somewhere so that it can be preserved for ever, but unfortunately we do not know.
As collectors we all wish for that Holy Grail, but to me I think there are some things that are better suited for museums. This would be one of those things. I am sure that every one of us would want nothing more than to get our hands on something with provenance like this, but I am not sure that it would be the right or best thing to do.
Oddly enough, the aforementioned George Brace collection went to yet another digital archiving company, but I am unsure to whom that is. Chicago Tribune writer Jason Meisner tried to reach out to the person, but the article does not provide a name, only that they could not be reached for comment.[31] All that it states is that the person owns a digital archiving company in Lake Barrington, Illinois.
Nonetheless, I do not like to bring up problems without offering solutions, and fortunately at least one solution does exist. One thing that can be done if you ever find yourself in possession of something like this is putting it on loan to a museum. This does a couple of things. First, it ensures that the item is preserved and stored by trained professionals. Second, it can be put on display for the world to enjoy. Most museums will accompany the item with a card stating that the item is on loan and who from while on display, therefore, giving you the credit.
I suppose this is easy for me to say because I own nothing of any significant intrinsic value, but it is something that is not uncommon. I saw this a lot when I worked in the Augusta Museum of History, and thought it was a great idea. History is something that should be shared, and it pains me to think of how many things are sitting unloved and unappreciated in safety deposit boxes.
In any case, I would be curious to know what your opinions are on this topic. Let me know down in the comments!
