Missing photos in iPhoto, also missing in Time Machine

Today I just noticed that 1000s of my photos are missing from iPhoto. All photos are missing previous to mid-May 2011 when I believe I upgraded iPhoto '08 to iPhoto '11.
They are also missing from all my Time Machine backups going back to Jan 2011 which makes me fear the worst. I have scanned using Data Rescue 3 (as suggested in an archived thread) but I don't see anything recoverable.
I am running:
- iPhoto 9.1.1
- MacOS X 10.6.8
Any advice on other things to try?
Rick

I just want everything from the old computer to be on the new computer, so I don't feel like I need to merge the libraries. 
You will need the paid version of  iPhoto Library Manager only to merge libraries. If you do not need to merge anything, you can skip that step.
So just try, if copying to an external disk and then to your new mac as Old Toad recommended will do the trick and transfer everything safely.

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