Shame

Im doing a project at the moment that involves vintage photos of people & places.
My wive's Aunt had these in a shoebox, they were handed down to her & in her late 80s she cant recall who they are anymore, so therefore the identity of these people has been lost :-(.
Today I ventured out to couple of house clearance traders to see if they had any old photos or albums that they were willing to sell to me, I was told that if no relatives existed then all photo albums or tins of photos were either shredded or sent to the tip ! all that history lost is kinda sad eh ? :-(