That afternoon she opened her computer and looked up the camera she’d inherited. The examples she found fell into two categories. They were either in pristine condition and auctioned for millions of dollars or in terrible condition, battered and in pieces, and auctioned for hundreds of dollars. She couldn’t find an example resembling her camera—somewhere between pristine and terrible. She decided to phone the closest auction house. It was hundreds of kilometres away, in Toronto. To her surprise, the woman with whom she spoke was quite interested in seeing the camera and while she couldn’t or wouldn’t speculate on its value, asked Agnes to send her pictures of it. “As many as possible and of every inch of it,” she advised.
Agnes did what she was told and took pictures from every conceivabl
