Had a play - turned 1 into B/W one to Sepia. Not sure if they're any better, but it gives you an idea of what things can look like
For my B/W and Sepia stuff I use the MikeW Photoshop action
The images posted below are from PS, but I installed GimpShop to see what I could do and try to find out what the equivalent controls were.
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1. Levels Boost
Image >> Adjustments >> Levels
You will see how your colour range is compressed, drag the black slider right to the start of the histogram, the white leftwards, I draged the grey point leftwards a bit
2. Brightness / Contrast
Image >> Adjustments >> Brightness Contrast
Brightness +6, Contrast + 10, bit of a boost
3. B/W Conversion - In photoshop I used a Gradient Map, Gimp doesn't seem to have this so you'll have to use either "Image >> Mode >> Grayscale" or "Image >> Adustments >> Desaturate". See which you prefer.
I then played with the contrast a little more, and added a simple border
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Again, don't know if they are any "better" as such, but they might give you some ideas
If you have a google around I'm sure you can find some decent BW/Sepia conversion scripts/techniques - Desaturate/Grayscale are some of the worst
