The Alan and Paulette Cotter collection is a professionally curated 50-year lifetime collection focused on the developing years of photographic images, their capture, production and presentation including one of the finest, most expansive collections of rare and well kept examples of pre-1900 cameras, early photographic images, magic lanterns, slides, stanhopes and related photographica. The Cotters lived in Oneonta, N.Y., and began their journey in the early 1970s opening a camera museum at the Brooks Institute of Photography, publishing the National Directory of Camera Collectors in 1971. Amassing an expansive and historically significant collection featured in the publication Reflecting on Photography 1839-1902, a catalog of the Cotter collection, they founded the Photographic Historical Society of America in 1976. Their professional and lifelong collecting efforts took them across the United States, dealing in diverse material of photographica across the country. Gehman Auctions, based in Ephrata, Pa., is delighted to offer these world class collections in a series of six weekly online-only auctions. Each weekly sale will close on a Monday at 3 p.m. EST. The first will be held Monday, Aug. 28, and the sixth will be Monday, Oct. 9. Highlights of these extensive collections include antiques and furniture on Aug. 28, featuring a French antique Mickey Mouse slide projector and an Ernst Plank Kinematofor Praxinoscope No. 4. The sale ending Sept. 4 will encompass antique daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and Stanhope material. Early tin types such as an 1800s frontiersman 1/6th plate ambrotype will be sold, a 1/6 plate post mortem daguerreotype of a child and many many others are in the diverse sale. On Sept. 11, antique magic lanterns and glass slides will be sold, such as a 19th-century magic lantern, a 19th-century porcelain figurine carrrying a magic lantern, a 1870s ornate folding graphoscope, and an antique mechanical magic lantern slide, and antique round cylinder magic lantern. Another noteworthy item will be a ca. 1880s double lens magic lantern projector. Antique photographic images and albums will make up the bulk of the session on Sept. 18. A large oversize celluloid photo album, a cabinet card of the wedding of Tom Thumb and his wife, and an antique cabinet card of Abraham Lincoln are among expected highlights. On Sept 25, there will be pre-1900 cameras, including an antique button spy camera, a prototype detective camera, a prototype coffee canister camera, a button spy camera stereoscopic wetplate camera, and a brass-encased panoramic camera. The auction on Oct. 9 will be considered an antique and collectible variety sale for the vast collections. Among the items earmarked that week will be a Hoffman electrolysis system with bakelite panel. To learn more, call 717-863-9339 or visit www.gehmanauctions.hibid.com.