westlicht

The oldest surviving Nikon camera is now also the most expensive. We reported back in October that the third Nikon 1 rangefinder ever made would be hitting the auction block at Westlicht with an estimated max value of $200,000. Well, that camera just sold for roughly $406,000, more than double the original estimate.

If you have $200,000 to spare, you may soon be able to buy one of two early Leica RIFLE sets that were first sold back in July 1938. The cameras will be auctioned at Leica's 30th WestLicht camera auction on November 19th.

One of the "most unusual" Leitz accessories is up for auction. This year's WestLicht photography auction features a New York Leica Gun Rifle Prototype, a device that lets photographers shoot images sniper rifle-style. The starting price is €150,000, and it's expected to fetch up to €350,000 (~$394,000).

The following article was written for collectSPACE.com. It is reprinted by PetaPixel with permission.

A camera claimed to have been used on the moon's surface sold for almost $1 million in Austria Saturday (March 22), despite concerns about its history.

Update: According to collectSPACE, this might not have been the only camera brought back from the moon. Check out the update at the bottom for details.

A total of fourteen Hasselblad cameras made it to the moon on the Apollo missions; but of those 14, only one ever made it back. And now, that one camera is going to go home with a lucky (and rich) collector pending an auction at WestLicht in Vienna on March 21st.

Each year, the WestLicht Photographica auction house puts some incredible historic cameras on the block and lets us mere mortals "oh" and "ah" at them before some collector with deep pockets plunks down hundreds of thousands of dollars to take them home (where they will, of course, be used daily right?...).

At the end of May, a signed copy of one of the most iconic photos ever taken, and the camera that took it, will both go on sale at the WestLicht Photographica Auction. The photo is a signed print of the iconic V-J Day "Kiss in Times Square" photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, and the camera is the Leica IIIa rangefinder that he used right up until the day he died.

Back in May, a 1923 Leica O-Series camera became the most expensive camera on the planet after being sold for roughly $2.79 million at a WestLicht auction. That camera was a prototype camera, and just one of 25 made (only 12 of them exist today). If you're wondering what the most expensive non-prototype camera is, look no further than the latest WestLicht auction that was held earlier today. The Leica M3D seen above fetched a staggering €1.68 million, or roughly $2.18 million, becoming "the most expensive camera from a serial production ever."

Want to see how the world’s most expensive camera was auctioned this past Saturday? The video above …

A Leica 0-series camera made in 1923 was sold this past weekend at WestLicht Photographica Auctions for a staggering €1.32 million (~$1.89 million). Only about 25 0-series cameras were manufactured to test the market before Leica began commercially producing the Leica A. It's the most expensive camera ever sold, but is still only half the price of the most expensive photo that was auctioned earlier this month.