1Earth Antiques & Appraisals Magazine > Fine Art > Expert Tip: Collecting Spanish-American War Photos

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Collecting Spanish-American War Photos    Coinciding with the war's centennial anniversary in 1998, interest in Spanish-American War-related items has skyrocketed. In fact, a recent eBay search for "Spanish-American War" yielded ten pages of listings. From medals to swords, photographs to statues, much of this memorabilia is listed for less than $150. The war between the United States and Spain was — in part — fought over the Philippines. The United States supported the Philippines in its struggle for independence from Spanish rule. The U.S.S. Olympia, c.1898 Many photographs and stereoviews — dual-image photographs that appear three dimensional in a viewer — from the war are selling for $5 to $50. Buyers are snatching them up so quickly, new ones are getting harder to find: Who is buying Spanish-American War photos? About 40 percent of the Spanish-American views go to the Philippines, and a lot go to Filipinos in the United States. Customers in the Philippines are very interested and aggressively buy the items. They may be reclaiming some of their cultural heritage. Not all the images they buy are related to the Spanish-American War, but most of them are from that era. To what do you attribute this increased interest? To a certain extent TV helped grow the awareness of the war. Interest started growing right around the 100-year anniversary when people started seeing images of the war on TV specials. Often, those shows use stereoviews as visuals. Stereoviews are one of the best windows into history. Basically, from the 1850s to the 1930s, everything and everybody was stereo-photographed.

Uniforms of American Armies - US Cavalry - Spanish & Mexican Wars Spanish-American War: The Story and Photographs by Donald Goldstein The War With Spain in 1898 by David Trask Spanish-American War 1898 (Brassey's History of Uniforms) by Ron Field, Richard Hook The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War by Peter Carroll Heart of Spain : Robert Capa's Photographs of the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa The Aura of the Cause : A Photo Album for North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War by Cary Nelson The Rough Riders (Modern Library War) by Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Bak Collector's Guide to Early Photographs by O. Henry Mace