Originally Posted by
Dan Fromm
Drew, these days Heliars and Lanthars are penny ante crap. The real money is in fast double Gauss types. Dallmeyer Super Six, a handful of lenses from Taylor Hobson, fast Boyer Saphirs and the like.
By chance I accumulated some of today's cult lenses, have divested nearly all. For most LF photographers' purposes a modern plasmat beats all of them that cover 4x5 or larger, not to mention 2x3 and smaller.
Predicting what's cheap now that will appreciate sharply in the next 40 years is a fool's game.
When my late friend Charlie Barringer (co-author of the Zeiss Ikon Compendium) received his death sentence he discussed selling his collection with Peter Coeln of Westlicht. The word from Vienna was that many of Charlie's treasures, e.g., all those lovely Contaxes with their lovely 50 mm Sonnars, were no longer wanted badly by many people. This isn't to say that none of his treasures were valuable -- his Super-Q Gigantar and Barry Lyndon lens brought really silly money -- but most of them weren't worth all that much.
If he'd wanted to leave his heirs more money he should have given the money he spent on photographica to Vanguard and let it ride. But then he wouldn't have had the fun of accumulating all that stuff or of using some of it.
Bookmarks