You can find them in the Antique Photography search on Ebay, but what is a TINTYPE?

Tintype images appeared on the scene in the mid 1850s, and remained popular until into the early 1900s!

A collodion solution was applied to a sheet of lacquered metal, such as iron, immediately before exposure.  Presto! A positive image. And multiple copies of the same image on one sheet of metal, which could then be clipped with tin scissors to separate (which is why tintypes often come in varied sizes and with uneven edges.)

Patent number 14,300 For The Use of Japanned Metallic Plates in Photography was issued on February 19, 1856 to Professor Hamilton Smith of Kenyon College, Ohio OH. The patent showed "the obtaining of positive impressions upon a japanned surface previously prepared upon an iron or other metallic or mineral sheet or plate by means of collodion and a solution of a salt of silver."

The tintype is also known by a couple of other terms which you may see written on a photographer's backmark. These included the melainotype (melaino meaning dark or black) and the ferrotype (ferro meaning iron) but popularly called the tintype.

Cheaper and easier to produce, the tintype allowed more people to have their portraits taken quickly and easily. Itinerant photographers even travelled the country in carts and railroad cars to bring the tintype to very rural and poor areas.

Civil war soldiers loved the tintype because they could be carried more easily than a dag or ambrotype, and with less risk of damage, and a tintype could easily be put into an envelope to send back home to relatives or the pining sweetheart.

Some tintypes were enclosed within cdv sized paper holders, often with a printed or embossed decoration.

And some tintypes may be found enclosed in cases, just as a dag or ambro might.  Some tintypes may even be found in a button setting or watch face or locket!

Tintypes come in a variety of sizes, from the tiny gem type of approximately 1 x 1 inch, to the full plate sized at 8.5 to 6.5 inches.

You  can recognize a tintype by its metal plate. A tintype will ATTRACT a magnet. The glass ambro will not, nor will the copper plate of the daguerreotype.

Compared to a dag or ambro, the tin type does not have quite the same crisp details. Yet there were some very talented tintype creators who worked wonders with the medium and produced remarkable images.

BE AWARE that some dealers are confused by the difference between the ambro or dag and the tintype. They may have mislisted a tintype as one of these other kinds of image. If you are uncertain, ask the seller some specific questions before the auction ends.