[rollei_list] Re: New Rolleiflex and Serial Numbers

  • From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,<rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 21:39:26 -0500

At 07:32 PM 1/26/2007, Richard Knoppow wrote:
>     A couple of hours ago I found an MX with Tessar at a
>local thrift shop. They wanted $25 for it so I took a
>chance. Unfortunately, the front element of the Tessar is
>not in very good condition but may still be usable. There
>was also an MX with a Xenar in it but it needed a lot more
>work than this one and was more. Also, the Xenar was badly
>etched so I passed it up.
>     The serial numbers of the one I bought are:
>
>Camera body, 1278950;
>Zeiss Opton Tessar, 75mm, f/3.5, Nr. 912808, T coated;
>Finder lens, Heidosmat, 75mm, f/2.8,  Nr. 632127.


Thanks, Richard.

"MX" is an American designation (US and Canada). The factory called this camera a 3.5A and it was so marketed elsewhere in the world. and its work project number was K 4 A. The product code for orders was Aulux. The price in 1951 in Germany was DM510. (That was the day of the "four in one Mark", so that works out to $127.50 in 1951 US dollars, equating when adjusted to inflation to $978.57 in 2005 dollars.) The camera was produced in two batches between JUN 1951 and MAR 1954. Your camera is fairly early in the first batch, so I would hesitantly suggest a production date of late 1951 or early 1952, but what do I know? <he grins>

The lens (are you certain that its not marked "Zeiss-Opton"?) was part of a batch of 15,000 such lenses produced at some unknown date in the early 1950's but, apparently, prior to late 1951! (The early Zeiss Oberkochen records often do not include the date on which the batch was completed, though the Jena records almost always do so. But Oberkochen seems to have lost a lot of its early production records, so that the scholars of the breed, Charlie Barringer, have to work from actual lens sightings such as Richard's richly appreciated numbers or from secondary sources such as Hasselblad and F&H and Exakta records where these survive.)

Thanks for the Heidosmat number. We are accumulating these though, so far, most do not seem to make a lot of sense. Some statistician will undoubtedly earn her PhD by finally deciphering this scheme from the data preserved at the Barringer Zeiss Odditorium in southern New Jersey or at the Helmut Thiele Institut für Weltweit Wissenschaft in Ost Eisfeld, Germany, but that will be too late to do those of us in our present number much good, I fear, though we will all be by then sitting at the table in Valhalla discussing the International Sign of the Doughnut with Bertele and Nerwin and Franke and Heidecke and the various Ernst Leitz's and Kellner and Zeiss and Abbe and Schott and Petzval (if he is FINALLY over his snit) and all of the others, while being served steins of meade (not my favorite brew: I do hope that they serve some single-malts and Guinness in the eternal hereafter) by Valkyries on Zeiss Ikon and Voigtländer and KW trays. Happy days are ahead, and, yes, there WILL be pie in the sky, by and by!

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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