Edison Thomas: $4,000 Leica lens split in two, sold on eBay as $1,000 piece of art

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

$4,000 Leica lens split in two, sold on eBay as $1,000 piece of art

Discontinued products typically dip in value, but such is not the case with Leica lenses -- unless they're sawed in half. Leica students had an opportunity to "make" cutaways of two Leica lenses as part of a graduation project. A discontinued Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm (valued at about $4,500 when fully functional) and a 50mm f/1.4 Summilux (about $3,700) were split, exposing various layers of glass and metal. Now forever unable to capture images of their own, all four halves were photographed, and the tri-focal lens was sold for $995 on eBay, complete with original box -- which, unlike its contents, appears to be in like-new condition. We were probably at home playing Frogger when Kermit went under the knife in biology, but we would have definitely had a perfect attendance record in any class that involved brushing camera equipment across a circular saw.

$4,000 Leica lens split in two, sold on eBay as $1,000 piece of art originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 16:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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