There's something about an object that has survived despite being abused. I knew a collector who wanted things that had been repaired, including wood, ceramic and metal, and the more obvious and expressive the treatment, the better. She called them mends and make-do's. I enjoyed seeing the things she'd found, for the cleverness, the frugality, and the honest results of age they showed. There's a real authenticity to those things.
Occasionally I find photographs that have been repaired, like this one of some men who worked as traveling salesmen of lightning rods. Maybe their on-the-road lifestyle was the reason the picture sustained the damage it did. Anyway, here it is a hundred years later, showing some character.
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