The lady at the estate sale in Dayton told me my whole approach to old photos was wrong

Nora Murphy · 2026-10-16T13:30:04.00975+00:00

I help run a small historical society booth at flea markets around Ohio, and for two decades I collected 1950s family photos mainly for the clothing and the cars. Last Saturday an older woman stopped at my table, picked up a snapshot of a family in front of a 1954 Chevy, and asked me if I knew the family's name. I admitted I did not, because I had never once thought to write anything on the backs. She did not lecture me, she just said, "Honey, a picture with no name on it is just paper." That got under my skin more than I expected. I went home to Kettering and pulled out about 300 loose photos I had bought over 20 summers, and I realized I could not identify a single person in most of them. So now I flip every photo over first, before I even look at the front, and I write down whatever the seller can remember, even if it is just a street name or a job title. If you collect these too, do you write notes on the backs, or do you leave them as they came?

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The lady at the estate sale in Dayton told me my whole approach to old photos was wrong | 1950s Time Capsule - HW Forums