During one of my recent regular web searches I found a lot of Kathryn-related photos on sale on the online auction site eBay.
I know such things are nothing new but this time some of the items really caught my eye and I wanted to publicise practises used by some sellers of such merchandise.
The first thing that struck me was the number of still photographs from Cold Case that were available. I was not aware there were that many around. Also, the fact that they were all described as ‘rare’ is a little rich. If you are selling printed images online then the rarity is only a trait based on how many you can sell. The word ‘sexy’ is also bandied about with gay abandon. Obviously with Kathryn being the chief subject of the images the ‘sexy’ is baked right in there, but there is still a time and a place to use it and this was not it. Is a shot of Lilly interviewing a suspect in interrogation ‘sexy’? It is not as though she was untying her hair, loosening a couple of shirt buttons, sitting on a chair the wrong way around, and asking in a husky tone where the perp was at the time of the murder.
Further inspection made me even more suspicious about some these items. That image of the interrogation room looked very familiar. A recent-KM-UK-Summer-Of-HD-post level of familiar. I could actually see the new items going up for sale a few days behind them appearing on this site. A comparison between some recently added screencaps and the ‘glossy photos’ shows my hunch was right. Many of these images being sold as high quality photos are just prints of screencaps, created by me for this site, albeit cropped to remove any station idents. If the scene matches a screencap exactly then the photo has to be taken from that individual video frame. There is no way a genuine photo taken during the filming can be the same. It is just not possible.
At this point I should make clear that I am not in any way claiming ownership of these images, that would be wrong. I am not trying to make money from this site, on the contrary there are costs involved in the hosting etc.
What I am stating is the sellers passing off printed screencaps as ‘rare… glossy photos’ are attempting to dupe buyers. The quality of the print may be fantastic but if the source is at best a 1920×1080 (that’s 2Mpixel) still taken from a broadcast video then it cannot be described as such.
I attempted to contact several of the eBay sellers about this and, to his/her credit, one of them responded. The individual thanked me for telling them about this and said they would discuss it with their supplier. I’ve not heard any more from them. Some of the auctions were closed and the numbers do seem to have dropped of since then but many remain and more have been added since. There are also a lot of actual on set stills and publicity photographs on sale.
My reason for this post? I wanted to alert everyone to this practise in case you were considering purchasing such photos. Of all the ones I’ve seen I don’t think any couldn’t be found on this site, or elsewhere on the Internet, and printed for yourself. If you really wanted a high quality, photo-style print you could probably do just as good a job by using your own printer and the right paper or finding someone with a good photo printer to do it for you. Many high street and online services can also produce glossy prints from any source you have, and all for a lot less money they the sellers on eBay are asking.
‘Carpe Diem’ as they say. Or should that be ‘crappy, dayum’? Or just ‘crappy deal’.
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