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Leica ii with Leica 1 serial number??


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Strange Leica or a rebuilt Leica?

If i have understand correctly, it was not unusual that already from the 1930s it was possible to modify / upgrade Leica cameras as the Leica developed and implemented new features in new models. I bought a few weeks ago one, as I understand, updated Leica 1. The serial number tells me that it is a Leica 1 from 1930. The built in range finder tells me that it is upgraded to a Leica ii and the flash sync connection on the back can not have been added until after the Second World War so that must have been another update. The lens have no serial numbers and it may say that it from the very beginning was the same lens that was mounted to the camera?

 

Who can explain? What do you think?

 

/Tommy

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Leitz would update older models into the 1950s. I have a IIIf with a serial # from the mid 1930s that started out as a plain III. The update meant basically a whole new camera (longer body with cast frame, new top & bottom covers, etc.) but they would still do this until the IIIg in 1957, keeping the old serial.

Updating a model I to II kept the body and added the rangefinder and was very common.

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I have two Leica IIIa-syns, a chrome one with serial# 116809 and a black one with serial# 19471. The last one was born in 1929 as a non-standard Leica I, probably upgraded before WWII to a Leica III and then in 1956 to a IIIa-syn. It's a beautiful camera, almost mint. I assume by its last rebirth (almost) nothing of the original I remained.

The chrome camera started life in 1934 probably as a chrome standard I. Also of this body, nothing reminds of its childhood days.

 

 

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