Old Images For Sale….Really???

Just don’t know where I really stand on this issue, meaning: “Old Images For Sale”

As a “Digital Consultant” I frequently get asked to recreate, scan or print current or old images. The work I get varies from pictures and illustrations to technical drawings, CAD, or BIM work. So I just happened to check my home email today and a friend of mine made me aware of this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MC-PHOTO-afb-834-Drum-And-Bugle-Corps-/111096196669?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item19ddd96e3d

What  I’m not sure of, since most people these days have a ton of photo's online, if someone else should profiting from these?

Flash back to 1987 (that’s when this photo was taken) digital work was just a dream and only accountants or your top executives had “Personal Computers”.  Now that I think about it, I don’t think I had a computer to work on until 1990. I know this since I learned AutoCAD in 1989 but had no place to “practice” my new skill, until I got a “hand-me-down” IBM –XT, that was upgraded to a “286” machine with a math coprocessor in order to run AutoCAD, (Rev10).

Now, in 2013, most people have phones more powerful than computers built only a few years ago. So if there are old archives of photos, images etc.,  etc.,  etc., can these be “re-packaged” and sold, even if they now know the images belong to someone else, or does the person that took the original photo retain the rights?