 In 1949, Adam retired and left Edinburgh for Kingussie, taking 14,000 of his negatives with him through a blizzard.In 1956, he suffered a heart attack while at Glenfinnan and subsequently moved back to Edinburgh.In 1958 he sold his personal collection of plates and prints to "D. C. Thomson", publishers of "The Scots Magazine", from where they entered the collection of the University of St Andrews library in 1987.