At least, he hopes he did.

“We were doing an auction way down in West Virginia, in the middle of nowhere,” says auctioneer and general manager Kevin Teets of Joe R. Pyle Auctions of Mount Morris, Pa. “It was estate sale for this family which had been in the same house for more than a hundred years.”

Found in the bottom of a trunk was a daguerreotype of a gold mining expedition. No one in the family knew where the photo came from, and the auction company pretty much treated it as a routine find.

“You can usually tell if you’re on to something good; you’ll get 40-50 calls,” Teets says. “But on this one we received two phone calls, and the questions were really vague.”

A couple collectors drove down from New York and Pennsylvania, and appeared, according to Teets, to take a great deal of time examining the item. To the auction crew, the significance of the piece was still “a mystery,” Teets said.

But, Swala recognized the photo for what it was; and its possible potential.

“When you opened it up, there was a velvet pad on the left side,” Swala says. “And impressed into that velvet was, ’Vance Daguerreotype Studio, San Francisco.’

“That validated that it was an image taken on the West Coast … Now, there are 16 figures in that photo and, this is pure speculation, but it’s very likely that someone from West Virginia is in that picture. There was a lot of West Virginia coal miners who pulled up stakes and moved to California during the 1840s and 1850s, when gold was struck … coming from Vance Studio, it’s a very important picture.”

Robert H. Vance (1825-1876) was one of the premier Gold Rush era photographers, covering the growth of the city of San Francisco as well as the mining camps that spotted the Sierras. “Few photographers of the American West possessed the ample vision and driving energy with which Robert H. Vance was graced,” according to Pioneers Photographers of the Far West 1840-1865: A Biographical Dictionary by Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn. “He was one of the first to perceive and capitalize on the American public’s enormous appetite for realistic depictions of the lands of the Pacific West.”

More than 300 of his whole plate California scenes were exhibited in New York City in 1851. The collection was acquired by Jeremiah Gurney, and later by John Fitzgibbon, and then, around the turn of the 20th century, disappeared.

In May 2004, Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati sold an 1856 daguerreotype by Vance of a downtown San Francisco scene for $143,750 (including buyer’s premium).

Bidding on the West Virginia Vance daguerreotype started at $100, but quickly accelerated as Swala and bidders from New York began taking the lot to more serious money. It eventually ended at $16,250.

“Yeah, I hoped that I could get it for a couple thousand,” Swala says. “I just kept thinking, ’yeah, I’ll take another turn on it’… I’m not an expert on photography … I just saw the picture and decided to take the pilgrimage down to West Virginia … what’s it worth? I do not know.”

Since the sale, Teets from Pyle’s auction has done a little research too.

“From what I understand, it’s rare to have a daguerreotype with multiple people, doing production-type work,” Teets says. “The process had to be pretty much in a controlled environment – there were a lot of lighting issues … so I guess from that standpoint, it was pretty rare photo ... it was a learning lesson for all of us.”

Contact: (724) 324-9000

www.joerpyleauctions.com

Eric C. Rodenberg