To say NJ businessman Henry Vaccaro has a story to tell could be the understatement of the year. In fact, he's got several stories that would knock your socks off. The saga of how he came to own a trove of Jackson Family memorabilia is the stuff of Hollywood movies, novels and a soon-to-be-released publication. It began more than 30 years ago when Jackson’s father Joe contacted him about a real estate deal at the Jersey shore and still continues to today.

In the 1980s, Mr. Vaccaro met Tito Jackson when making guitars for him as part-owner of Kramer Guitars. The guitar company achieved world-wide success for it’s innovative guitar designs and stable of high profile players like Eddie Van Halen and Richie Sambora. But despite it’s early success, in 1992 the company filed for bankruptcy. A company owned by the Jackson family agreed to purchase the guitar company from Henry Vaccaro, but soon defaulted on the payments. Thus began the decades-long series of legal battles that ultimately resulted in the legal transfer of priceless Michael Jackson and Jackson Family items to Henry Vaccaro. The collection is reported to include over 60 unreleased master tapes, costumes, letters, documents and gold records. It also includes thousands of never before publically seen photographs captured on Kodachrome slide film. The photos include professionally shot Jackson 5 concert performances and other images spanning years of Jackson family history.

Understandably, safeguarding this one-of-a-kind photo collection had been a top priority for Mr. Vaccaro from day one. Michael Jackson’s tragic and untimely death in June 2009 created a burning imperative to commission the professional digital archiving, preservation and backup of the entire photographic collection. Henry Vaccaro and a group of expert advisors chose FotoBridge for this important undertaking.

“We were delighted to be selected for this high-profile project”, said Julie Morris, President of FotoBridge. “The collection includes extraordinary images, many never seen, not only of Michael Jackson, but the entire Jackson family. It contains an important visual heritage of one of the most remarkable musical celebrity families of modern times. The commercial value of the collection was likely incalculable at the time we initiated the effort. Clearly, our strict absolute-privacy practices, facility security and advanced media handling process earned the confidence of Mr. Vaccaro’s team.” added Ms. Morris.