Leica M2X

[sksaito]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Is there such a thing as a Leica M2X? Supposedly "catalogue only" version with no self timer circa 1966. The engraving on the camera is M2, not M2X.

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello sksaito,

 

When the M2 was first released it did not have a self timer. Later 1 was incorporated. After that it was available w/ (M2S) & w/o (M2X) the selftimer. Catalog designations not engraved on the top of the camera.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[sksaito]

Thank you for your input. Is an M2X more in value than an M2?

[luigi bertolotti]

I think that M2 without self timer are rather uncommon in respect of the many with it(selftimer could also be added by Leica Service) , so, supposed equal conditions, they deserve some premium. Here is a page of the 1964 US catalog, which makes use of the "M2X" designation (39 $ less than the equiv. M2) :

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited April 22, 2012 by luigi bertolotti

[jc_braconi]

Thank you for your input. Is an M2X more in value than an M2?

There are more without selftimer if I can trust in my documentation

on a grand total of 82500, 5000 made with self timer including 250 on Black M2

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[250swb]

It was cheaper so it makes sense that more would be ordered without the self timer, and this era was the high point of the M2, with more journalists buying it than amateurs who may want a self timer.

 

Steve

[luigi bertolotti]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

There are more without selftimer if I can trust in my documentation

on a grand total of 82500, 5000 made with self timer including 250 on Black M2

 

I could agree... according to written sources, the batches of M2 declared "with self timer" are less than the ones in which there isn't specification about.... but looking at the (many) M2 that are regularly offered for sale, I have always had the feeling that most of them are equipped with selftimer... (I never took records... but it is years and years that I look at Net sales of Leica M, and am 99% sure of this feeling)

[M9reno]

This is what I've been able to piece together from the little material available to me.

 

Van Hasebroeck, "Leica: A History Illustrating Every Model and Accessory," (1983) p. 319 has a table listing separately M2 and M2 (delayed action) from 1958 to 1962.

 

M2: 23,365 cameras (from 1958 to 1960)

M2 (delayed action): 23,722 cameras (from 1959 to 1962)

 

This period seems to have seen the bulk of production of M2, very roughly three fifths acording to Laney's lists.

 

According to Hasebroeck "all" (Laney: "most") M2 cameras from no. 1,004,151 to the last (1,165,000) had self timers. 1,004,151 falls in a batch dated 1960. Last batch was 1967.

 

Therefore it would seem according to these two authors that most M2 cameras (up to two thirds?) left the factory with self timer. Others were later upgraded to self timer. This would leave M2X (without self timer) in a minority, even if not a small one.

 

Best wishes,

Edited April 23, 2012 by M9reno

[sksaito]

I think that M2 without self timer are rather uncommon in respect of the many with it(selftimer could also be added by Leica Service) , so, supposed equal conditions, they deserve some premium. Here is a page of the 1964 US catalog, which makes use of the "M2X" designation (39 $ less than the equiv. M2) :

 

Love it

[jc_braconi]

This is what I've been able to piece together from the little material available to me.

 

Van Hasebroeck, "Leica: A History Illustrating Every Model and Accessory," (1983) p. 319 has a table listing separately M2 and M2 (delayed action) from 1958 to 1962.

 

M2: 23,365 cameras (from 1958 to 1960)

M2 (delayed action): 23,722 cameras (from 1959 to 1962)

 

This period seems to have seen the bulk of production of M2, very roughly three fifths acording to Laney's lists.

 

According to Hasebroeck "all" (Laney: "most") M2 cameras from no. 1,004,151 to the last (1,165,000) had self timers. 1,004,151 falls in a batch dated 1960. Last batch was 1967.

 

Therefore it would seem according to these two authors that most M2 cameras (up to two thirds?) left the factory with self timer. Others were later upgraded to self timer. This would leave M2X (without self timer) in a minority, even if not a small one.

 

Best wishes,

Leica Serial Numbers: M's Sorted by Type

[luigi bertolotti]

Leica Serial Numbers: M's Sorted by Type

 

... I think it's an almost impossible question to make clear :

 

- The "M2X" is surely reported in the 1964 US catalog

- The quoted list (Cameraquest) does not distinguish if M2s of that timeframe are with or without ST... many were surely sold with... the price differential was small..

- The "General catalogue for Leica Dealers" of 1961 (in my hands - edited by Leitz Wetzlar - not Leitz USA) lists, describes and illustrates the M2 as "with self timer", with various codes related to body - body with various 50mm lenses - tripod bush size.... no code for a "non self timer" variant (the code for the body only is, not surprisingly, the same of the US catalog - 10308)

- Was the "M2X" a version listed only in the USA ? Not so sure... but surely, in that times, it was more common in the USA to make advertisements in which the vendor was proud to declare "prices from xxx $ !" and to have a lower entry point could be appealing to Leitz N.Y : I have some Italian and German photo magazines of the '60s... many Leitz ads... with prices almost never mentioned.

 

Very hard to draw any conclusion... personally, I remain on my trivial impression that "most M2s on the market are with Self Timer"

 

As a side note, I have a catalog of Leitz microscope gear of that era which lists, as one of the accessories, a M2 camera with the same code of the M2X of the 1964 US catalog - 10300: logical at all not to have selftimer on a camera for lab usage.

Edited April 24, 2012 by luigi bertolotti

[M9reno]

- The "General catalogue for Leica Dealers" of 1961 (in my hands - edited by Leitz Wetzlar - not Leitz USA) lists, describes and illustrates the M2 as "with self timer", with various codes related to body - body with various 50mm lenses - tripod bush size.... no code for a "non self timer" variant (the code for the body only is, not surprisingly, the same of the US catalog - 10308).

 

Thank you, JC.

 

I don't know where van Hasebroeck and Laney learned that "all" (or "most") M2 after s.n. 1,004,151 came with self-timer. I assume there must be some factual basis.

 

Note, interestingly, that Laney's own list of Camera Serial Numbers (pp. 595-97 of "Leica Collector's Guide" (2005 ed.)) has the abbreviations Vorl. or VW (Delayed Action) for some issues starting in 1958 (a batch of 300 cameras) and ending in 1960 (a batch of 350 cameras, up to s.n. 1,005,350). After 1960 the abbreviation Vorl. or VW does not appear, yet this is the period where Laney himself says "most" M2 cameras came with self-timer! This is very curious, and the only way I can make sense of it is if the default M2 version after 1960 became the self-timer version, so it became redundant to label each batch thus equipped after that.

 

The 1961 catalogue cited by Luigi suggests the same. No code for a non self-timer variant, ergo: the self-timer variant had become the standard one.

 

In other words, we should read the lists carefully, interpreting the lack of an abbreviation just to mean that the batch in question was a "normal" batch. And it seems that the normal M2 batch after 1960 came with self-timer.

 

Just my guess...

 

All best wishes,

[doubice]

Going by memory, just about all late production M2’s were equipped with selftimer. The page from the 1964 catalogue provided by Luigi also states that the ‘M2X is a variation of the M2 with the selftimer eliminated’ - this clearly implies that an M2X would have been a special order item.

 

Also - the M2X designation was one conceived by Leitz US. Wetzlar records list M2 bodies as either ‘M2 Vorl.’ or ‘M2” - no M2X. And as correctly stated above, during the later years of M2 production, the ‘Vorl’ was dropped from the records, as most if not all M2’s were delivered with the selftimer mechanism.

 

As Luigi, I have also seen more M2 bodies with selftimer, rather than without……

 

Cheers,

 

Jan

[jc_braconi]

As Luigi, I have also seen more M2 bodies with selftimer, rather than without……

 

Cheers,

 

Jan

 

Jan, Luigi by experience I have seen more, but more, whithout... so our witnessing have no value.

on the pict I posted from l to r are respectively been issued in 1958 , 1960 and 1962

[M9reno]

our witnessing have no value.

on the pict I posted from l to r are respectively been issued in 1958 , 1960 and 1962

 

Thank you, JC. I agree completely: unless one worked on the production line in the factory, or sold Leicas in the 60's, none of us has seen a statistically significant sample of the total 80,000+ Leica M2s produced!

 

But in a way, the photograph of your three beautiful samples, with their dates, tells the story better than any book. We can see the notable variations came early in the production cycle (1958-60), and then, once the camera found its fame, not as the "poor man's M3" but as a masterpiece in its own right, it settled into a kind of mature phase, a long production run of eight years equipped with a standard set of features.

 

So whereas, in 1958 an impressionable amateur might have regarded the M3 as superior over the M2 because the former came with a self timer and the latter did not, or because of the M3's more angular sculpting, window frames, frame counter window, etc., by 1960 all these must have been rightly viewed as superficial differences, and people understood very well that the self-timer feature was not remotely a definitive part of either camera. The M3 and M2 had become companions and supplements instead of competitors (the union of their most distinctive features, their frames, was to be consummated in the M4), so Leitz decided simply to include the self-timer with "all" or "most" M2s from then onwards.

 

At least, this is the story that makes sense to me.

 

That said, the "M2X" seems a remarkable bit of advertising to an American market. The letter 'X' somehow makes things sound seXy, eXotic, eXclusive... . I personally find my own M2X s.n. 982xxx all of these things: no self-timer gets in the way of the fingers on my right hand, just beautiful smooth vulcanite. A "delicious taste" as Luigi once so eloquently wrote about such a camera in another thread.

 

All best wishes,

[hlritter]

This is a belated and superfluous reply, but I just wanted to chime in because I received an M2-X for high-school graduation in 1963. I specified this model to my parents because it was somewhat lower-priced than the M2-S, which had the self-timer.

[Pecole]

I had never heard - in my collecting times - of the M2X. When reading the above and detailed comments (especially by Bertolotti and Braconi), I went back to my files and found the following M2 pictures and also a list of the various M2 I had. As for the list, I found only three serials "without delay lever" : 946860, 1004781 and 1061013. All three have the "button" return. All twelve other chrome ones have delay and "lever" return : 1013439, 1037755, 1051313, 1051648, 1061544, 1086383, 1112190, 1137373, 1137718, 1142086, 1161544 and 1162934. And finally, two were black paint : 948956 and 990511, both with delay and lever return.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

           

[willeica]

I have the 1961 UK General Catalogue which shows the M2 as being only available with a self timer at that time. There were with and without lens options, though and also a version with 3/8th " tripod bush. I have an M2 with button rewind and no self timer which was produced in November 1958. The first M2s with self timer were produced in December 1958. The lists of M2 SNs on the Cameraquest website is somewhat strange in that while some are listed with self timers a lot of later models which had this feature are not so listed. Personally, I prefer the button rewind with no self timer as it makes for a much nicer grip for my right hand. I never use a self timer anyway. These are, however, user rather than collector considerations. Collectiblend shows that button rewind models fetch a slight premium over lever rewind M2s. The M2x does not appear on Collectiblend, but the M2M, M2R and M2S are there.

 

William

[chris_livsey]

I'm with William in preferring no-self timer and both my current M2s are button rewind no timer 967*** and 976*** .

My absolutely non scientific impression is this combination is the least common to see offered, I always note them as one day I may see a consecutive number.

 

As a completely random sample a popular auction site has 16 M2s for sale of which 5 have no self timer only two of those being button as well. Interestingly both those are much more expensive, one because it is BP (original) £18k and the other is in amazingly original condition, and early ( and is sorely tempting) but not thankfully consecutive!!

Edited December 29, 2016 by chris_livsey

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[luigi bertolotti]

By sure the "button rewind" is the less common of the "standard" M2... M2-M and M2-R are anyway much rarer.