M-D (Type 262) production numbers?

[Datsch]

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18 hours ago, Aldrahn said:

In a fit of madness I sold my M-D awhile ago (5150491)

Firstly, thanks very much for starting this thread, I have had a lot of enjoyment from sleuthing how the serial number system works (-ish).

There are a few around right now. I used search terms: leica "m-d",  images in the past month

Here is an ebay one in London, if you dare use ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175733185733

And one that just sold in the US (though shipping and VAT would have been hair rasing) https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1809375/2

In Portugal: https://www.olx.pt/d/anuncio/leica-m-d-type-262-IDHKOae.html?isPreviewActive=0&sliderIndex=1

In Italy, this we heard was sold in January but now the same serial number unit seems to be back on again .., https://www-msmaterialefotografico-it.translate.goog/prodotti/fotocamera-leica-m-d-typ-262/?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=es&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

[stoicphotos]

Hi everyone,

First post on this forum. Happy to join your community and share my recent M-D purchase off of ebay.

5150477

Production date of 8.18.2016 (see pic)

Previous owner is from Brooklyn, NY and the camera now resides in New Jersey, USA. 

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[pippy]

19 hours ago, stoicphotos said:

Hi everyone,......First post on this forum. Happy to join your community and share my recent M-D purchase off of ebay.......5150477......Production date of 8.18.2016 (see pic)

Previous owner is from Brooklyn, NY and the camera now resides in New Jersey, USA.

Hi, stoicphotos. Welcome to the Forum and congratulations on finding an M-D 262! They don't come onto the market very often from what I can see here in London.

I trust you will have a great time in the Forum and even more fun taking photographs with the camera. Yours appears to be the fifth example from the 51504XX batch listed hereabouts (I believe the most recent list can be found back on page 4).

Always interesting to see the date mark of the label stuck on boxes. As discussed earlier in the thread it would seem highly likely that this date is when the item was prepared for shipping and not the actual date of production but some folks here like to think of it as their cameras' Birthday...and why not?!

Philip.

[Datsch]

Hi @stoicphotos and welcome to the club. I have a record of many M-Ds I have sighted over the years, and I think yours was offered for sale by someone in Jamestown NY in 2021, so your camera has been been steadily but slowly moving south over the years ...

[Anthony MD]

My M-D, S/N 5142970, was given a red leather skin by Leica at the same time the previous owner sent it in for a CLA…!

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[easy_action]

Congratulations Anthony, you are now a member of the small but exclusive MD owners club!  (I guess you are 1 of 1 in the red leather MD sub-group!)

[easy_action]

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Just spotted for sale on mpb.co.uk s/n 5142986

 

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[Anthony MD]

1 hour ago, easy_action said:

Congratulations Anthony, you are now a member of the small but exclusive MD owners club!  (I guess you are 1 of 1 in the red leather MD sub-group!)

We still don’t know how many M-D’s were produced…!

[Datsch]

2 hours ago, easy_action said:

Just spotted for sale on mpb.co.uk s/n 5142986

 

Thanks for this. I have email alerts set with mpb for M-Ds but I never seem to get alerted ... This is only the second one I've ever seen at mpb .... mpb tend to be keenly priced; they had an M10-D a year or two ago that was a steal (the going rate for an M-D is £4k or more I would say IMHO) so this one will not hang around I think ...

[Roberto Watson]

I sold my Monochrome months ago. first generation in pristine conditions buyer paid a lot, at the end they were very happy about purchase. MD’s are a beauty, 24mp beauty!

[Datsch]

Update: MPB did send me an email alert  today, at 8pm, so good job on their part. I guess I need to actually check my email now and again!

[pippy]

6 hours ago, Anthony MD said:

We still don’t know how many M-D’s were produced…!

From what I can remember, Anthony, we had arrived at the point where, assuming all cameras were produced in all 100-off blocks, there could be some 1,700 kicking around. Putting this in some sort of perspective it seems likely - going by released production numbers - that Leica made somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million M9 cameras so although thrice as numerous as the 600-run 'M Edition 60' screenless ancestor the M-D Typ-262 is still a fairly rare species.

Philip.

Edited September 29, 2023 by pippy

[Anthony MD]

Looks like the minority is right after all...!

[chris_livsey]

17 hours ago, Datsch said:

Update: MPB did send me an email alert  today, at 8pm, so good job on their part. I guess I need to actually check my email now and again!

Gone now, not to me, late to the party again, the alerts are hit and miss I find.

If UK based and not aware this is useful, I have no connection to them and not all UK dealers are participating so not fully comprehensive but fun to search.

Used Cameras and Lenses - Price Comparison (usedlens.co.uk)

 

[Datsch]

On 9/30/2023 at 3:30 PM, chris_livsey said:

Gone now

Wow! That was fast ... sold within a day or two ...

[Datsch]

On 9/29/2023 at 6:14 PM, Anthony MD said:

We still don’t know how many M-D’s were produced…!

So, as @pippy just said, we have been going by batch numbers and assuming that all 100 possible serial numbers in each batch were actually built.

But we know that sometimes Leica is a bit random with their serial numbering, in terms of date order and so on. Also, I found some M10-Ds that had the same batch number as some Sultan of Brunei special edition (screened) M10Ps ....

For some batch numbers I have seen for example 4983004 and also 4983099, implying perhaps that all 100 of the 49820xx batch were in fact made. However, I also have a few singletons, like 4998807 and 5150200 were only one out of the 100 possibles has been sighted.

So let's just entertan for a minute another approach.

My background is in biology. If I was counting a population of woodlice, we would catch a bunch on one day, mark them with a dot of white paint, and then release them. Next day we would catch another batch, and from the ratio of marked to unmarked you can estimate the whole population.

This is called the 'Mark, Release and Recapture' method and is uses The Lincoln Index to estimate population size.

Population= totalnumberanimalsin1stsample × totalnumberofanimalsin2ndsample / numberofmarkedanimalsin2ndsample

The sample for 2023 is 14 sighted, 7 of which I had seen before (ie as if marked by a dot of my white paint)

As I had 137 records, that mean the total population would be:

                            137 * 14/7 = 274

I would take this with a large pinch of salt. For example my sampling is not very good at capturing anything in China, which I understand is a significant market for Leica,

Also, people who have never posted on flickr, never mentioned their camera on a forum, never put it up for sale in a leica store or ebay or fredmiranda or mpb and so on, those individual M-D's are ones I have not caught sight of. They are the woodlice that hid under logs and weren't sampled, as it were. However, the Lincoln Index method should account for that, I think.

Anyway, let's just double the number to account for this, and call it 500.

So looking at the data we have, I would say between 500 and 1700 is a fair assessment.

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Datsch

[Anthony MD]

3 hours ago, Datsch said:

So, as @pippy just said, we have been going by batch numbers and assuming that all 100 possible serial numbers in each batch were actually built.

But we know that sometimes Leica is a bit random with their serial numbering, in terms of date order and so on. Also, I found some M10-Ds that had the same batch number as some Sultan of Brunei special edition (screened) M10Ps ....

For some batch numbers I have seen for example 4983004 and also 4983099, implying perhaps that all 100 of the 49820xx batch were in fact made. However, I also have a few singletons, like 4998807 and 5150200 were only one out of the 100 possibles has been sighted.

So let's just entertan for a minute another approach.

My background is in biology. If I was counting a population of woodlice, we would catch a bunch on one day, mark them with a dot of white paint, and then release them. Next day we would catch another batch, and from the ratio of marked to unmarked you can estimate the whole population.

This is called the 'Mark, Release and Recapture' method and is uses The Lincoln Index to estimate population size.

Population= totalnumberanimalsin1stsample × totalnumberofanimalsin2ndsample / numberofmarkedanimalsin2ndsample

The sample for 2023 is 14 sighted, 7 of which I had seen before (ie as if marked by a dot of my white paint)

As I had 137 records, that mean the total population would be:

                            137 * 14/7 = 274

I would take this with a large pinch of salt. For example my sampling is not very good at capturing anything in China, which I understand is a significant market for Leica,

Also, people who have never posted on flickr, never mentioned their camera on a forum, never put it up for sale in a leica store or ebay or fredmiranda or mpb and so on, those individual M-D's are ones I have not caught sight of. They are the woodlice that hid under logs and weren't sampled, as it were. However, the Lincoln Index method should account for that, I think.

Anyway, let's just double the number to account for this, and call it 500.

So looking at the data we have, I would say between 500 and 1700 is a fair assessment.

 

I indeed texted Leica in the UK asking the production number of the M-D 262 with no answer!  Why is it a top secret matter anyway?

My M-D S/N is 5142970 if it helps…!

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Anthony MD

[Anthony MD]

My suggestion is have Thorsten Overgaard visit Leica personally and ask the question on the production numbers of the M-D 262?

if Thorsten  doesn’t know the M-D production numbers no one knows except Leica…!

 

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Edited October 2, 2023 by Anthony MD

[Aldrahn]

That M-D 262 is back on MPB now.

I was going to buy it, but have only just paid all my debts off and am enjoying being totally debt free making it hard to justify purchasing this 🤔

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[Anthony MD]

3 minutes ago, Aldrahn said:

That M-D 262 is back on MPB now.

I was going to buy it, but have only just paid all my debts off and am enjoying being totally debt free making it hard to justify purchasing this 🤔

I love being debt free…!