My local collectors' society conducts closed auctions a few times a year and the last one was on Sunday. One of the items in the catalog was listed as "Lens: Lancaster & Sons, large brass" which sounded good. On investigation it turned out to be "Voigtlander and Sons" not Lancaster and is numbered 523 but has no other indication of what it might be. I wasn't the successful bidder; the new owner is a passionate Voigtlander collector who said he had been waiting decades to get such an early lens. I'm not a Voigtlander collector and with no time to do any research I opted to stop bidding early since I had no idea what I was buying. It was kind of disappointing because larger brass lenses rarely show up at the auction while there is usually a slew of german rangefinders and such that hold no interest for me.
So now I am curious as to what the lens might be. I may have the chance to borrow it to shoot, but since I would need to make up a lens board specifically for it I'd like to know if it is worth the effort. I've attached a few pics but unfortunately I didn't have anything for scale. It was around 10" long, including lens hood and maybe 4" in diameter but those are very rough estimates. Any ideas?
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