About 15 years back after retiring I did a lot of refurbishing and flipping for resale vintage cameras as a sort of hobby-job. I bought this Leica M2 rangefinder in 2009 in "salvage" (non-working and beat-up) condition for less than $100. At the time, working examples of the same camera brought at least $1200. I stripped the chassis and body parts to bare brass, and finished it in DuraCoat brand Olive Green firearms coating (wonderful stuff, BTW) and a set of new black skins to give it an old-school WWII U.S. Army look. I topped it off with an original working Leica light meter refinished to match, added a nice Russian 50mm bayonet lens, and sold the finished camera to a Leica collector as a one-of-a-kind conversation piece and daily shooter. Leica M2's are not rare, but they are fantastic rangefinder cameras to use, and were justly prized by pro photographers back in the day. Today in any kind of decent working condition they certainly are not cheap. Needless to say, this is one of the projects I should have kept. My investment was only $300 or so, but of course required a LOT of man hours.
i completely get that
I am into vintage road racing bicycles. For every example of a old racing bike that is actually valuable, there are a hundred that people erroneously think are valuable when it comes time to sell Uncle Joe's old Peugeot ("I know what i got !")
I actually think they look cool on a bookshelf as a decoration of sorts -- kind of like old fly fishing reels and the like (cameras, not bikes
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My late father’s AE-1 Program, kinda fun to play with.
I used it on a cub scout campout several years ago, they called me a hipster….….
Hipster Camera Gang Stand Up!
