[Leica] leica prices

["Rod Fleming" <rodfleming@sol.co.uk>]

Hi

A few of you may have noted a line I put in a post a while ago about the
relative prices of Leicas as compared to the '50's.

Coincidentally this week's UK Amateur Photographer carries a letter from a
Dr Dodds, of Nottingham, who says

"Leicas...........were still restricted imports (to UK) even in 1960, and a
good secondhand one could set one back the best part of £100- a year's wages
for me then."

Now assuming that the good doctor was a junior doctor then (I don't know the
US translation- intern? houseman?), and extrapolating that to today, a
year's salary would be in the region of £18,000. (A fully qualified doctor
makes much more, of course.) After taxes etc, that would be about £15,000.

A new M6 body today costs about £1500 including tax, or one-tenth of the
above!

Let's try another route. In 1955 my parents bought a country house for
£2500. It passed out of the family in the 70's, but it's worth, now, about
£150,000. This is a conservative estimate and the house is in a part of
Scotland which has not been affected by sharp property price inflation.

If we divide the present value by the old one, we get the result 60. We
would need to multiply the price of a Leica in 1960 by this factor to get a
relative value today- which means that by this estimate, and taking the
doctor's price as our basis again, a good s/h Leica should today cost at
least £6,000- and in fact a new M6 will cost one-quarter of this.

I could do the same trick with the price of cars and other commodities.
While this is only a bit of fun, it's worth remembering that photography
today, even at the most exclusive end of the market, is much more affordable
than it used to be; and it is also worth remembering that guys like Ted
Grant, who bought their first cameras at that time, had to shove their hands
a long way down their pockets to do it.

BTW you multiply the sums above by 1.6 to get the dollar equivalent today,
though in 1960 the rate was higher- at least 2.5. But I would have to check
that (where?) and anyway it just adds complications which I don't think are
necessary. It's the broad ratios which count.

Off you go and scratch your heads now,


Cheers


Rod