Sorry for the wrong e-mail address of the previous post.

An acquaintance of mine is still distraught over a theft that occurred twelve years ago when his apartment was broken into. Although he used the items, he said he was not aware of the items "value."

His father had been a Vice President for Leica for many years, and had given him one of three (according to his Dad) prototype Leica SL's as well as a Leica M3b which Ernst Leitz had reportedly given his Dad many years earlier.

Anyway, he is not into cameras today. But he still wonders what those items might have been worth?

Also, if there are any suggestions for tracing what might have become of these items.

-- DJ Soroka (DJ2SOROKA@msn.com), March 31, 2002

Answers

To my knowldege, there is no such thing as an "M3b". I', not sure to what you are referring, an M3?

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), March 31, 2002.

the leica m3b is from the company's venerable scientific instrument line, a stereo microscope to be exact. in some versions, it is equipped with an integral camera for microphotography. used, the m3b sells for about $1000. the prototype SL is anybody's guess. it is not a popular model, but leica rarities are always desirable. if it had unusual markings and different features from a production SL, my (wild) guess is that it mite be worth up to $2000-$4000. if identical to the production model with simply a very low serial number, the figure would be far less. check christies sales archives (south kensington) to get an idea of what leica prototypes go for. that's where i just looked.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 31, 2002.

Soroka, I'm sorry for your friend's loss; if he has filed a police report detailing the stolen equipment and serial numbers, there may be a chance of recovering the items if they turn up in an auction.

Speaking of lost prototype cameras, I read somewhere about the story of the prototype Contax SLR. It goes something like this: in 1936, Zeiss Ikon formed a team to develop a 35mm SLR camera, and in 1940, a prototype was built in great secrecy based on the Contax II rangefinder body, but with a bulit-in eye-level prism that gave a upright and left-right reversed image in the viewfinder. The developement was halted during the war as Zeiss had other production priorities. The prototype was subsequently lost in the chaos as Dresden was invaded by the Red Army. Soon after the war, as the story goes, a Russian officer turned up at the Zeiss factory in what had became the East-German city of Dresden with a request to repair a peculiar camera that featured the Zeiss Ikon logo and a fixed viewfinder prism. The service technician refused the repair thinking that it was a privately converted camera. Later, when the factory people heard about it, they realized that they missed the opportunity of recovering their lost prototype Contax SLR. It wasn't until 1948 when Carl Zeiss Jena produced the Contax S, the world's first SLR with a built-in viewfinder prism.

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), March 31, 2002.

My lack of Leica knowledge is showing.

The camera given by Ernst Leitz was a IIIb, not a m3b.

This is just due my ignorance of the Leica line.

I'm sorry.

However, thank you for the responses so far.

-- DJ Soroka (DJ2SOROKA@msn.com), March 31, 2002.

don't even get me started on contax prototypes. would i love to have a IIb/iiib (recently discussed on this forum), at least i think that's what they called the prototype for what would have been the replacement for the iia/iiia. what a great camera line!!

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), March 31, 2002.

Thank you all, again, for your responses.

From what I can gather, he will be pleased to know that the Prototype SL, with a 90 mm and macro lens, as well as his IIIb and lens; appear to have a value of perhaps $6000. I feared it might have been much worse because of the prototype nature of the SL and the provenance (Leitz) of the IIIb.

-- DJ Soroka (DJ2SOROKA@msn.com), April 01, 2002.