In June, an nameless bidder paid $8.5 million for a 100-year-old digicam that is primarily a light-tight field with a shutter. 5 months later, one other dropped £7.6 million on a current-production mechanical movie digicam you should purchase new for simply over six thousand {dollars}. Welcome to the world of collectable Leicas, the place the gulf between operate and worth has grow to be so huge it makes your head spin.
The cameras in query – a 1923 Leica 0-Sequence prototype and a Leica M-A gifted to Pope Francis – headlined what Leitz Photographica Public sale is looking an “excellent yr” for the official public sale home of Leica Digicam AG. Collectively they accounted for over $16 million of gross sales throughout Leica’s centenary celebration of the Leica I; the digicam that revolutionized pictures in 1925 by proving you did not want a suitcase-sized contraption to take respectable photos.
A way of theater
The 0-Sequence No. 112 is one in every of roughly 25 prototypes constructed earlier than Leica dedicated to serial manufacturing in 1925. Solely a couple of dozen survive. Its $8.5 million worth makes it the second most costly digicam of all time, behind one other 0-Sequence that fetched $17 million in 2022.
The Pope’s digicam is much more fascinating as a result of it exposes the pure theater of high-end digicam amassing. Right here, we’re speaking a couple of mechanically managed rangefinder with no publicity meter, no electronics, no battery; simply brass, leather-based and glass. Leica gifted it to His Holiness in 2024, full with white leather-based overlaying and the milestone serial quantity 5000000.
Following Pope Francis’s demise in April 2025, the digicam got here to public sale as a charity lot. Estimated worth: €60,000-70,000. Closing hammer worth: €6.5 million. That is greater than a thousand instances retail, for a digicam that just about actually by no means uncovered a single body of movie.
Photographic mythology
It is easy to be confused. In any case, you’ll be able to nonetheless purchase working Leica IIIs from the Thirties for beneath $2,000. Some will nonetheless take completely respectable images.
However that misses the purpose of why individuals accumulate Leicas. These cameras occupy a singular place in photographic mythology as a result of they enabled a selected form of seeing. The small, quiet, moveable 35mm rangefinder liberated photographers from tripods and darkish cloths. It made avenue pictures and photojournalism attainable. Cartier-Bresson used one. So did Capa and numerous others who outlined how the twentieth century noticed itself.
So when somebody pays $8.5 million for an 0-Sequence prototype, they don’t seem to be shopping for a practical digicam. They’re shopping for proximity to that creation fable. They’re buying one of many 25-ish objects that made every little thing else attainable. It is the photographic equal of proudly owning Shakespeare’s First Folio – you are not shopping for it to learn within the bathtub.
Acquiring immortality
The Pope’s digicam operates on completely different logic, however arrives on the similar vacation spot. That M-A is effective as a result of it connects the customer to a number of narratives concurrently: the pontiff’s humanitarian legacy, the charitable objective of the sale, and the historic second of his demise.
Which brings us to what Leitz Photographica Public sale actually sells: a form of immortality. While you die, your small business will get bought, your property will get divided, your achievements get forgotten. However a digicam that bought for thousands and thousands? That is getting in a museum the place your title will get connected to it eternally. You grow to be a footnote in photographic historical past.
Leica has cottoned onto this brilliantly. They present cameras to popes and royals, reserve milestone serial numbers for well-known figures, and invite collectors to unique viewings in Wetzlar. They’ve constructed a complete mythology round German craftsmanship and photographic heritage, then monetised that mythology by their public sale home.
And maybe that is becoming. Pictures has, in spite of everything, at all times been about capturing time; holding onto moments that will in any other case disappear. What are these public sale costs if not the final word expression of that impulse?
Somebody paying €7.2 million is not actually shopping for a digicam. They’re shopping for their manner into photographic historical past, making certain their title will get talked about in the identical breath as Barnack and Leica and the start of recent pictures.
Try the greatest Leica cameras you should purchase new at the moment