Illustrated price catalogues were published and distributed during the second half of the nineteenth century in every country that was affected by industrialization. The illustrations that were used in these catalogues intermingled with several contemporary image-systems; the centuries old practice of engraving, the relatively new practise of using photography, the illustrated publication, displays at world exhibitions and educational displays in public museums. The aim of this article is to investigate the circulation of knowledge that the photographs in the illustrated price catalogues took part in and to interrogate them as object photography. My journey includes three steps: early photography from the 1840s, the illustrated price catalogues of the 1880s, and contemporary antiques journals. This article discusses what knowledge was/is produced, maintained, transformed, and transferred by the use of object photography in these contexts. To this purpose, object photography is identified as a genre of images that generates knowledge that negotiates questions of time and historicity. I note that this is a quality that made object photography pertinent for nineteenth-century manufacturing and marketing and continues to be relevant for the historic revivalism and antiques business today.