Back again with one of those crazy auction stories I love to share! Usually it's about coins and stuff so this one a bit different.
So, back in 2022 in the "40th Leitz Photographica Auction" a camera from the 1920s sold for 15 fucking million dollars 🤯🤯🤯
That's a really impressive number considering how the auction house estimated a price of 2 million $ with a starting bid of 1.000.000 $.
But what makes this camera so unique to fetch this ridiculous amount of money?
Labeled as "Leica 0-Series No. 105", it was part of a limited series of just 23 prototypes produced to test the market before Leica commenced commercial production in the mid-1920s. Today only a handful of those survive so it's clearly rare.
But this particular one is even more special.
It was the one used personally by Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the Ur-Leica and a pioneer of 35mm photography. He used it until sometime in the 1930s and later passed it to his son. It remained in the family and was eventually passed to a collector sometime in the 1960s.
Tldr, a camera with lots of historical significance. Is the price justified?
Doubt it, but rich people gonna rich. It's amazing what people with fuck you money will buy 😂
Fyi, the previous record was also held by a Leica 0-Series camera. That one fetched only about 3 million usd in 2018... Yeah, cheap change 😅
You can read a bit more on the story here if you like.
