Kodak Memorabilia Collector Guide

Why Kodak advertising matters to collectors

George Eastman founded the company in 1880, when he began making photographic dry plates for sale on the leased third floor of a building on State Street in Rochester, New York. Kodak’s own history says he built the business on four principles: a focus on the customer, mass production at low cost, worldwide distribution and extensive advertising. He also wrote the advertisements for the very first Kodak products himself.

In 1888 Eastman introduced the Kodak camera with the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest,” which Kodak says became a well-known phrase within a year. The camera came loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and cost $25. The owner sent the whole camera back to Rochester, where the film was developed, prints were made and new film was loaded, all for $10. Kodak describes the launch as the birth of snapshot photography.

Eastman also invented the name. He said K had long been a favorite letter because it seemed strong and incisive, and that Kodak came from trying out combinations of letters that started and ended with K. The word was first registered as a trademark in 1888, and Eastman chose the distinctive yellow trade dress that Kodak says is widely known throughout the world.

The Brownie and a mass market for pictures

In 1900 Kodak introduced the first Brownie camera. It sold for $1 and used film that cost 15 cents a roll, and Kodak’s timeline says it put photography within the financial reach of virtually everyone.

This guide treats the cameras as Kodak’s products and concentrates on the material made to sell them. The George Eastman Museum’s collection, for example, includes a French Kodak advertisement for the Brownie camera from about 1905.

The Kodak Girl

The recurring figure in early Kodak advertising was the Kodak Girl. Kodak’s history says that as magazines, newspapers, displays and billboards carried the Kodak banner, the Kodak Girl appeared with the style of her clothes and the camera she carried changing every year. The George Eastman Museum holds examples such as an advertisement for the folding pocket Kodak camera featuring the Kodak Girl, dated about 1913.

Martha Cooper, a photographer who collects early Kodak advertising, told Collectors Weekly in 2010 that she knew for sure there was a Kodak Girl by 1900 and that the figure mostly disappeared after 1930. She also said most early Kodak Girls were painted rather than photographed, and that before color printing they were hand colored. Because the outfit and the camera changed each year, both are useful clues when dating an image, alongside any date or publication details printed on the page.

What Kodak collectors find

Cooper said she is more interested in the graphics than in what the pictures were advertising, and her collection centers on how women with cameras were portrayed. The categories below are documented in Kodak’s own history or in that collector account.

• Magazine advertisements and Kodak Girl images, including ads in Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese as well as English
• Catalogs, such as the pocket catalogs Kodak published between 1914 and 1926, which show women as active photographers
• Advertising postcards, including cards Kodak produced around 1910 that were designed to look handwritten
• Plate and film boxes, from Kodak’s yellow trade dress to an Australian box for Kodak glass orthochrome plates decorated with Kodak Girls taking pictures
• Displays and signs, the point-of-sale side of a company whose history notes that displays and billboards carried its name, and that in 1897 the word Kodak lit an electric sign on London’s Trafalgar Square, one of the first such signs used in advertising

Bankruptcy and the licensed Kodak name

On January 19, 2012, Eastman Kodak Company and its U.S. subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Its reorganization plan became effective on September 3, 2013, when Kodak emerged from Chapter 11 and received $325 million in net cash for the sale of certain assets and liabilities of its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses.

The Kodak name stayed in circulation through licensing. In its annual report for 2021, Kodak said it licenses its brand for digital, instant print and 35mm film cameras, consumer printing and scanning devices, batteries, apparel and eyewear, and that licensees use the Kodak brand on their products and sell through their own distribution channels. A Kodak logo on a shirt, bag or new camera is therefore no evidence of age by itself.

What to check before buying

Judge the object, its printing and its history rather than the name on it.

• Format: ask whether a paper item is an original magazine page, catalog, postcard or poster, or a later reprint, and request photographs of the reverse, the edges and any printer or publication marks
• Dating: compare a Kodak Girl’s clothing and camera with the date the seller claims, since Kodak changed both every year
• Packaging: check that the product name, film type and any printed date or code fit the claimed period
• Signs and displays: ask for dimensions, material and photographs of the back, mounting points and wear
• Licensed goods: treat logo apparel, bags and newer cameras as possible licensed products unless the seller can document an earlier origin
• Provenance: a history such as a former camera dealer is useful, but treat an unsupported story as a lead rather than proof
• Rarity: Cooper said eBay showed that a catalog a collector once bought as a one-time find can turn out to be fairly common, although some things are still expensive and rare
• Condition: note tears, stains, fading, folds, trimming, tape and repairs, and confirm the return policy

Where Kodak history is preserved

Kodak’s own advertising archive is at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester. Kodak’s timeline says Eastman’s Rochester home opened as an independent public museum in 1949, and the museum’s George Eastman Collection includes his restored house and more than 200,000 objects.

In November 2003, Eastman Kodak Company donated its entire collection of advertising materials to the museum, which lists it under Kodak advertising and publications, 1880 to 1980. Most of the approximately 95,000 advertisements are in English, but many are in Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese. The museum’s collection also holds forty scrapbooks kept by Kodak’s publicity department from the late 1880s until 1932. That scale is a useful reminder when a listing calls a Kodak advertisement unique.

Where to find Kodak memorabilia now

Period Kodak advertising, packaging and signs now move through the secondary market. The Kodak company page on I ♥ Capitalism collects live, relevance-checked resale listings and links each item to the marketplace where it is offered. Inventory changes whenever sellers add or remove an item.