The Best Cameras to Never Take Pictures With

$4,671,000 worth of Leicas

At the Westlicht camera auction earlier today, wealthy Leica collectors vied to set price records for series production cameras.

With a price of 1,680,000 Euro the legendary M3D (opening bid: 150,000 Euros) [top] owned by the LIFE photographer and Picasso intimate David Douglas Duncan is the most expensive camera from a serial production ever.

It is the second-highest price ever paid for a camera.

The gold-plated 'Luxus' Leica [lower right], dated 1929, sold for 1,020,000 Euro (opening bid: 70,000 Euro), [and] was the second most expensive camera of the auction.

The very first serial-production M3 (1953, serial number 700001) [lower left], formerly owned by Willi Stein, chief engineer of Leitz, was sold at a top price of 900,000 Euro (opening bid: 80,000 Euro).

Funny, but if I owned these they'd just sit on the shelf. Rimshot!

Mike
(Thanks to Kevin Purcell)

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

MB: "Do those prices include the lenses? What about shipping? Paypal fees? So many unanswered questions!"

Warren M: "I love my Leicas but really, whatever tells the story."

Jamie Pillers: "Haven't the buyers heard...Film Is Dead!"

Comments

[Dennis Ng]

A bit strange. DDD is the one who, upon finding guy taken a sharp pic of him in japan and went to find out which company making that lens. it is a small co that made oem lens for canon. he got all the lens he got as it is shaper than all the leica lens he got and go to korea with them to doc the war. That lens company was bought into the fame. May be that is the m3 that doom rangefinder as the lens company tried some rangerfinder body before using the same body and make slr. as the lens so good people bought the slr bodies to vietnum for another war. that lens compay no one heard of is called nikon.

is this the m3 that introduce nikon to the world that make it expensive?

[Rick Keir]

I'm not sure which Leica M3D (there was more than one) was sold at auction, but Duncan mentions them in his afterword to "I Protest!" as being the main camera he shot his Vietnam photos on. So they were working cameras, once, unlike the other two.

That's two different parts of the Leica mystique: Leitz was still close enough to the hand craft tradition that they turned out custom builds (not just serial numbers), and that those custom cameras were used to make iconic photos. If I had a fortune to spend on a trophy camera, I'd spend it on that one.

[James Sinks]

Is it wrong that I think the girl is prettier and more interesting than the cameras?

[Jimbo]

You could buy a lot of film and do a lot of traveling with the money spent on those cameras. Different strokes....

[The Lazy Aussie]

I'd use them all.

[The Lazy Aussie]

Actually, I'd ike to use any of them, particularly the gold one and then toss it without looking to an attractive assistant to pack away.

[Ed]

I believe the price was 1.4 mega euros, the commission was an additional 0.28 mega euros.

[Lukasz Kubica]

I would never use or buy them. A camera without a photographer is just a piece of crap, no matter how expensive it is. I could newer understand the cult of a tool used to do something extraordinary. David could use any M3D ever produced to take his pictures, so this one is not special by any means.
Would you buy a brush used by Picasso ?

[MB]

Do those prices include the lenses? What about shipping? Paypal fees? So many unanswered questions!

[MartinP]

"... Funny, but if I owned these they'd just sit on the shelf..."

Well, I sort of suspect that they will be sitting on a shelf for the new owners too!! Perhaps even an air-conditioned, burglar-alarmed shelf.

[Eolake]

Is it wrong that I think the girl is prettier and more interesting than the cameras?

I wouldn't blame ya. But then I've made a lifestyle out of it (see the Joyful Nudes banner on the left, more beauties than you can shake a D800 at.) (Disclosure: my own site).

[Patrick Perez]

On 3D's camera, why is the lens yellow? Filter, or thoriated glass elements like my old Canon 35 in FD mount?

Patrick

(I agree the young lady pictured with the cameras is very pretty, but while the cameras are too old to be of personal use to me, I suspect the reverse is true of her. Oh well.)

[Richard Newman]

Just for reference, 1 Euro = ~$1.30 USD. It varies slightly from day to day.

[Gordon]

I'd make a terrible collector. When I look at that photo I just see how I could have three different film stocks loaded all at the same time.

Gordon

[Mathew Hargreaves]

I like her cavalier smile. How many photographers get to hold a camera worth more than $2000? I have put my Pentax 645D in other photographers hands. When I tell them how much it is worth, the color drains from their faces. Its like converting a color picture to black and white. I bet her camera is a phone that gets replaced once a year.

[Tim B]

"Would you buy a brush used by Picasso ?"

Ummm yes I probably would.

[Douglas Urner]

I'd love to know what was customized about DDD's M3 bodies. I read one description that claimed they were personally assembled by Ernst Leitz. It's very cool to think that the CEO of Leica knew how to build a camera.

[Peter Croft]

Forget the cameras, how much for the girl? Beautiful, and in mint condition.

[Rick Keir]

Douglas: "I'd love to know what was customized about DDD's M3 bodies". They took the Leicavit accessory, a thumb powered rapid advance mechanism, which required a modified body to connect it to. A used Leicavit by itself is easily $1500 or more, without any special associations with who owned it.

This is the prototype of the Leica MP, another nearly unobtainable Leica M3 camera variant that was never available for general purchase (450 MP cameras, so over 100x as many as the M3D... not that we'll ever be able to buy one of these either!). You had to be a working pro to buy an MP.

Apart from that, they had custom serial numbers (the "D" stood for "Duncan") to recognize Duncan's stature as a photojournalist who used Leicas.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Owning the cameras is more acceptable in first-world legal systems than owning the girl, though. (But it is not wrong to find the girl more interesting than the cameras.)

As for prices of cameras I've held -- probably the Arriflex 16SRII with the Zeiss 10-100/1.8 zoom was the high point. At the time the insurance coverage was for $70,000. Although possibly studio-quality color video cameras I worked with in the late 1970s were worth more after correcting for inflation.

[toto]

It's shocking that the girl uses only cotton gloves, instead of a whole-body suit complete with mark, so as not to breathe on those cameras.

[Paris]

I know this isn't supposed to be a "forum." but:

To James Sinks: No.

To Lukasz Kubica: Yes.