I saw an Attrape (M2) today that seems fully functional. Is this possible without conversion?

Regards,

Anthony

-- Anthony Yau (tonyy88@yahoo.com), December 08, 2001

Answers

No, if it works it has had the missing mechanical parts added.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), December 08, 2001.

According to several of my books on Leica collecting, the factory use to provide non-working models to dealers for the purpose of display. Often these were made from specimens that failed some quality control criteria, and were beyond recycling the defective item, like a body shell. They were simply empty cameras to look at.

Some of these were later converted to working cameras, which basically means all of the "guts" that were initially left out were installed and calibrated to a usable level. Identification of these cameras are by a 5 digit serial number followed by a letter "A", which is for "attrape" or dummy. Considering the fact that these cameras started as "not good enough", and were later "fixed", and not to mention the rarity factor, I would as a user, rather than a collector, give these a pass.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), December 08, 2001.

Ha. I'll bet you that in the Leica world anything strange automatically qualifies as a "collector" to someone, whether it initially could pass inspection or not. :-)

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), December 08, 2001.