Unpublished Beatles Photos | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Hi @sheriM

It sounds as if your father has a major archive. When the time comes, you should approach a major auction house — Sotherby’s and Christies come to mind — with as much of the archive as you are prepared to part with, mentioning that it includes unpublished photos of the Beatles, Elvis and other celebrities. They will likely examine the archive for free and come up with a way to market it in the best way, splitting it into separate lots, etc., with more valuable items like the Beatles photos becoming their own lot.

The value increases for unpublished photographs of celebrities, especially the Beatles and Elvis. The important question to be able to answer is copyright, and whether your father or his former employer owns the copyright. While pictures taken on his own camera are most likely his copyright, pictures taken as part of his job may not be. Your father hopefully knows whether he holds copyright, and it’s important to know as a photograph that can be sold with copyright is worth more than one sold without copyright.

The provenance would be your father’s career; if you could get your father to add his memories of encounters and big stories he’s covered that would add provenance and likely value. Either have him write notes to go with the more memorable sets of photos or record him talking about the archive and then you can pick out bits to go with the right photos. That detail of Ringo bumming a cigarette adds to the story of the photographs.

There is a good chance your father’s archive could prove extremely valuable; the Beatles and Elvis images, sold with copyright, depending on the amount, could easily be worth $10,000+ for each group. That’s $20,000+ without knowing what else, and who else, is there.

The important thing for you and your siblings to do when the time comes is to get the archive appraised by an auction house, possibly a couple as you may prefer the approach of one to the other to how best to market it.

I hope this helps.