[Leica] Prices of long ago

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Prices from long ago are hard to remember because we filter them through the
experience of our present economic situation. Unfortunately for my wife,  I
am a compulsive packrat and have kept most of my receipts and checkbooks
from as far back as the 1950s. Here is what I found:


1. In 1947 the tuition for my freshman year at an Ivy League college cost
all of $800. Living expenses were not included but I recall that you could
buy a very filling Italian meal, including some adequate red wine, for less
than a dollar. I earned most of my tuition and board by working nights and
weekends as a photo stringer for the Boston Globe. Newspaper work didn't pay
too well in those days but living was cheap. I bought only well used cameras
including a Leica IIIb and a Contax 1. Fortunately film and processing was
free. I sold the Contax to another sucker. The Leica was stolen a few years
later. It had cost me $80 which I could ill afford.


2. In 1954 I bought a pair of new Leica cameras at an airport duty free
store with my unused leave pay from the Army, a IIIF with a f2.0 Summicron
and a first edition M3 with a f2.8 Elmar. I paid $154 for each. I had
trouble getting them through customs because I had TWO cameras. A special
letter from E. Leitz, NY resolved the problem.


3. My first post Army job offer was as an assistant professor at $8000 per
year. This was too little to support a wife and baby so I took a job in the
military/industrial complex at twice the salary. In 1963 I was offered a
better paying professorship  at the newly formed City Univ. of New York grad
school. We could afford to buy a house and three acres of land in a wooded
area in the Hudson Valley at the exorbitant price of $40,000. A new car, a
Chevy Vega, cost $3500. A new Leica M3 body cost $288, an f2.0 Summicron,
$150. Gasoline was $0.39 per gallon. But a 12" B&W TV was priced at over
$300 and a newly introduced HP "slide rule" calculator cost $495. We still
have the house and the Leicas. Mini computers were book case sized and were
tens of thousands of dollars. No loss. Who wanted a computer in their home
anyway?


4. My old photo magazine ads show that prior to WW 2, a Leica IIIc with an
F3.5 Elmar could be bought from Willoughby Camera in New York for about
$150. Leicas were advertised in the photo magazines after WW2 but by the
late '60s the Leica ads had all but disappeared in favor of SLRs. Nikons,
Canons, Topcons, and Minoltas were the prestige SLRs. The prices were less
than half those of the Leica Ms. I bought a new Olympus OM-1in 1973 for $244
and, in 1977, a Leitz/Minolta CL for $297.


College tuition at the City College of New York was free and graduate
tuition cost about $1000 per year. It was an excellent education. At that
time CCNY ranked first in the nation for the number of students who went on
the get Ph.D. degrees. It was so good that Bertrand Russell was rejected for
tenure (but I made it). ;-)


Times and prices certainly have changed.


Larry Z