Re: [Leica] Leica Users digest V17 #158

[LRZeitlin@aol.com]

There has been a lot of loose talk on the LUG about the investment value of 
Leica cameras. At today's prices there are only two reasons for buying a new 
Leica camera primarily as an investment, both of them irrational. Those 
photographers who buy Leicas to actually take photographs need read no 
further.

First, if you are a camera collector and/or a camera speculator you will buy 
the camera and keep it unused in its original box, expecting that its price 
will increase at some future date. This is a distinct possibility. An unsold 
1954 M3 and Summicron lens with its original carton and shipping documents 
which cost about $250 new would probably sell at a collector's auction for 
the price of a small car, an unused urLeica would go for the price of a new 
house. 

The price appreciation of most Leicas, however, is no better than the 
equivalent amount of money deposited in bank CDs and considerably less than 
funds invested in the stock market. That $250 cost of the Leica in 1954, 
compounded at 6% per year would have grown to about $3250, about the price of 
a new Leica kit. Invested in the stock market at the average annual rate of 
return for those 46 years, it would have grown to $39,604, enough to buy a 
new camera and a BMW to drive it around in. Buying Leicas only for value 
appreciation is simply a variation of the "Greater Fool" theory beloved of 
stock speculators. You may be a fool for paying so much but you hope there is 
always a greater fool who will buy it from you for more.

Second, if you are one of those who have a "best quality" addiction, you will 
buy the camera to fondle and possess, secure in the feeling that no one has 
or appreciates quality equipment better than you. For a definition of 
"quality" see Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." 
Don't bother to take pictures with the camera. It is too expensive and 
valuable to risk. Besides you may be annoyed by the fact that the resulting 
pictures are almost indistinguishable from those taken with lesser cameras. 

So unless you are a camera speculator or a quality addict don't buy a Leica 
for appreciation. Buy a mid-range Canon or Nikon, a Voigtlander Bessa R, or 
even a (horrors!) Contax G1 or G2. You will get state of the art engineering 
and manufacturing, fine lenses, autofocus and autoexposure at a third to half 
the cost of an equivalent Leica system. Invest the money you save to provide 
a real legacy for your children. Remember that if the Indians who sold Niew 
Amsterdam to the Dutch had invested the difference in price between a lesser 
system and a Leica, they could not only buy back Manhattan but every bit of 
developed property from Boston to Washington, DC.   -  LarryZ