Identity help, leica or other? different language printed on camera

[Hollydunn]

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I have been selling a clients camera collection recently. Most are Leicas.

I have one that is in another language.

Brown leather case has 3 letters stamped on it.

Body # 94913

TpyAkommyha

HKBA-YCCP

XapbKOB

Lens# 102327 (3 letters, 1:3,5 F=50 m/m)

screw mount

 

Anyone know anything that could help in my search????????

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[Pintpot]

It's a FED - Russian copy of the Leica

For a value try EBAY

regards

[sabears]

FED 1, see here all the variants: USSRPhoto.com - Russian / Soviet Cameras Wiki Catalog

 

cheers.

[gyoung]

Although its a copy, tts nice to see a Fed that looks like a Fed and hasn't been faked up as a leica.

Can't be many left, a collectors item?

 

Gerry

[sabears]

Although its a copy, tts nice to see a Fed that looks like a Fed and hasn't been faked up as a leica.

Can't be many left, a collectors item?

 

Gerry

 

...they have made ​​thousands and thousands and ​​thousands, we have few opportunities

[Hollydunn]

Yous guys are awesome. I would have never guessed Russian.

That gives me tons of avenues to explore now that I know.

I appreciate the help.

Thanks, Holly in Michigan:D

[Heiko Hahn]

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To be more precise, your camera is a FED I C built in 1939. About 40.600 cameras of this subtype were made from 1937 to 1939 - your example must be one of the last, as the change to model I D occured around No. 95.000.

 

While the usual FED I C is not very rare, please note that some examples of the famous "S Type" or "Kommandirskij" FED are based on this subtype and bear 9x.xxx serial numbers. You should check whether your example has a 1/1000s shutter speed.

 

Regards,

HH

[Orient XI]

Welcome Hollydunn. Did you know that the Fed is so named after the Soviet secret police chief Felix Dzherzinsky? The story goes that he had some skilled mechanics in the gulag and set them to work to produce a Leica-copy camera. Indeed, his name can be seen on the top plate in some variant that is so far beyond my virtually non-existant Russian grammar to even be worth guessing at.

[UliWer]

Felix Dzherzinsky died in 1926, so he couldn't be involved in the FED production. The factory was named in commemoration to him. There are rumours that the cameras were built by children who lived in an orphan's home attached to the factory.

 

Edit:

Doesn't seem to be just rumours:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Makarenko

[Orient XI]

Looking at the top plate again I almost wonder if you a faked Fed. The inscription seems to have been engraved by a different hand to the serial number. Transliterating — as opposed to translating — this gives

Trudkommunya

NKVD USSR

FEDzersinskogo

 

I suspect there are as many faked NKVD (Soviet secret police) Feds as there are Leicas with the faked Reichsadler. Similarly as many faked Dzhershinsky cameras as faked Rommel Leicas.

[Heiko Hahn]

Fortunately, this is not the case. While fakes of some very rare Soviet cameras do exist, the "Trudkommuna" FED is not that rare, and there are lots of technical details to differ them from the even more common post-war FED.

 

Regarding the engravings, there seems to be some misunderstanding in the previous posts. Just to clarify the facts:

 

The "Trudkommuna F.E. Dzersinskogo" in Kharkov was a huge industrial and residential facility established to provide education and employment to young people who had become homeless during WW1 and the revolution. As many other industrial sites, it was put under control of the Soviet Ministry of Inner Affairs (NKVD). As common in the Soviet Union, it was named in honor to a deceased communist leader - in this case, Felix Dzersinskij. The notorious pre-KGB secret service was just another sub-organization of the huge NKVD, totally unrelated to the trudkommunas.

 

Because of this background, all FED cameras of the 1930's/40's state the name of the trudkommuna (F.E. Dzersinskogo) and the company "owner" (NKVD).It's simply the equivalent to a company logo. Western collectors often decipher "Dzersinskij" and "NKVD" on their cameras and assume them to be something special, possibly issued to the secret police, but this is mere nonsense (imagine somebody reading "Ford" on a car and reason it was driven by Henry himself).

[Orient XI]

I saw an old international soccer match clip on TV the other day; the Soviet Union team wore their traditional red shirts with "CCCP" emblazoned on the front. The soviets always referred to their country as CCCP where the first C stands for soyuz or union. Why would such arch-patriots as the NKVD refer to the country as YCCP unless this is a fake?

[sabears]

I saw an old international soccer match clip on TV the other day; the Soviet Union team wore their traditional red shirts with "CCCP" emblazoned on the front. The soviets always referred to their country as CCCP where the first C stands for soyuz or union. Why would such arch-patriots as the NKVD refer to the country as YCCP unless this is a fake?

 

see here:FED cameras

...

NKVD stands for Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennih Del, later know as the KGB.

YCCP stands for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic which was part of the Soviet Empire and changed to CCCP on later NKVD models...

[Heiko Hahn]

NKVD stands for Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennih Del, later know as the KGB.

 

While NKVD, indeed, stands for "Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennih Del", this term simply means "Peoples' Commissariat for Internal Affairs".

 

The infamous secret police which later became the KGB was just a small branch of the NKVD, which had many other functions as well, including controlling a large part of the Soviet industry, as well as the Trudcommuna system.

 

Again, there is nothing wrong with the engravings of this camera. It simply shows the 1939 standard version of the FED engravings, not rare at all, not valuable, no fake (and yes, YCCP is perfectly right).