My thought is this - the buyer probably wasn't a devotee of photography able to pay the price to purchase a piece of photographic history but more likely a nouveau riche dilettante looking to enhance his/her prestige with the purchase.

the sad fact is IF I actually found something like that in the attic I'd not know what it is I've got, and would probably sell it cheap in order to buy some new fangled bit of technology to make my day to day work easier. maybe trade it for some "L" series lens or an Alien B lighting set up...LOL

who here would have known what they had in reality, as it looks like some old piece of crap? I'm amazed at the pricetag/value and will start looking at the thrift stores and garage sales I attend occasionally looking for props with a bit more attention to detail.

whoda thunk it?

- this is a little off the camera subject, more on the finding a diamond in the rough vein.

Quite a few years ago I played in a rock band with a bunch of my pals. I was the one that couldn't afford anything new, so I was always on the prowl for used stuff. I envied one of the guys in the band whose parents had purchased a new Fender Strat and stack of Marshall amps for him. My dad was young university professor and believed it built character in kids to earn what they wanted or needed. I had an old Gibson tube based amp from the 1950's era along with an old crappy Fender guitar and case which I picked up (extremely used) at a small music store in a small town in Utah for $125. The case was filled with burn orange colored velvet. It played well and was my favorite of the dozen or so guitars I bought in my youth.

I still have it and decided to check out what it was worth, so I did an Ebay search and found a recent sell for almost $40K. In fact I found the exact case for sell over $10K with no guitar.

1957 Fender Esquire (not mine but similar)


I have several other guitars the I purchased ,(used) during that part of my life, that are not worth quite that much but that are close to $20K.

My grandmother's father was a photographer in the late 1800's I'm sure some of his cameras still exist in the family's possession. She gave me a few of her own cameras that I've never investigated value on but most likely will now. 

$1.89M? I never knew hipsters had that kind of coin