Earliest serial number?

[neelin]

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Mine is 3102787, a silver chrome ex-demonstrator, bought in North Wales on 14 April - is that 1st or 2nd batch?

My 2756 was bought in Canada November (1st one in our city of 600K), It went back to Solms for the banding upgrade (or would that be a the banding downgrade). Canada is served via US distributor.

 

Robert

[Shootist]

I am from Italy too and as I wrote on my thread "bad banding on higlights" I bought my M8 one week ago, its number is 11020XX, it is affected by banding problem and it need to be fixed.

 

Ciao

Guido

 

There were no M8's with 110xxx serial numbers, Unless Leica is starting over from the late M3 days with serial #'s.

I suspect you meant to type 31020xx.

As to your banding problem, which I couldn't see in your original thread (Maybe my monitor), this has been a ongoing problem/fault and is not related to serial # or time of manufacture.

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[larry]

My chrome-body serial number is 310024X (purchased at the end of December '06). I might add that aside from the common firmware glitches, it's worked flawlessly.

 

Larry

[jaapv]

So the serial numbers are all over the place - a nightmare for future Leica historians.

[guidowi]

There were no M8's with 110xxx serial numbers, Unless Leica is starting over from the late M3 days with serial #'s.

I suspect you meant to type 31020xx.

As to your banding problem, which I couldn't see in your original thread (Maybe my monitor), this has been a ongoing problem/fault and is not related to serial # or time of manufacture.

Ops sorry! It was of course a mistake of my keyboard. S.N 31020XX

[Olsen]

Mine has no. 31094xx and has been without troubles. I see 'blinds' occasionally when using both jpg and RAW files together, but reckon that to be not an important issue. I bought it at Cathay Photo, Singapore in April, a shop known for selling large volumes, relatively speaking, of Leica gear. I have no idea which 'batch' it is supposed to be.

[Tom_W]

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3199xxx bought 1 month ago (could be the latest?)

[Shootist]

3199xxx bought 1 month ago (could be the latest?)

Well here we go again. The black M8 I bought in June has 3190 yours has 3199. That is 9000± serial # inbetween. I'm not sure Leica could produce 9000 units of anything in 5 month let alone M8's.

[Tom_W]

Well here we go again. The black M8 I bought in June has 3190 yours has 3199. That is 9000± serial # inbetween. I'm not sure Leica could produce 9000 units of anything in 5 month let alone M8's.

 

 

With all due respect, being a physicist and highly educated, I can read a serial number. It goes 3199xxx.

 

T

[pascal_meheut]

 

With all due respect, being a physicist and highly educated, I can read a serial number. It goes 3199xxx.

 

T

 

With all due respect, you don't need to be a physicist and highly educated to read a S/N. All it takes is to be more than 6 or 7 years old.

[Tom_W]

With all due respect, you don't need to be a physicist and highly educated to read a S/N. All it takes is to be more than 6 or 7 years old.

 

So why infer that I have read it incorrectly?

[Shootist]

With all due respect, you don't need to be a physicist and highly educated to read a S/N. All it takes is to be more than 6 or 7 years old.

 

If you LOOK AT what I wrote as to how many numbers are inbetween your serial # and mine I said/wrote 9000±. Which means I left off the XXX of both of our serial numbers.

And the point I was trying to make was that the serial numbers are NO record of how many units have been made or the date of manufacture.

 

Boy are you touchy.

 

Oh I wasn't inferring you read it wrong. What made you think that? You may need to go back a few months and start reading posts from then.

This topic has been covered extensively. Leica does NOT use consectutive serial numbers and they do not produce products one serial number after the other. Serial number are allotted in blocks and then whatever that block of number are they take one hot shoe with a serial # on it and put it on a camera. The next time they take a hot shoe to build a camera it could be of a lower or high number then the one they build yesterday or 2 weeks ago.

[Tom_W]

Apologies

 

For information... "9000 units in 5 months"... well I think that is crediable.

 

> Leica Camera AG

> Financial year 2006/07 (ending 31 March)

> Turnover: € 145,7 million (up 36,5 per cent)

> Profit: € 0,5 million (minus € 9,2 last year)

 

>Business areas turnover:

 

> 1. System cameras & lenses (M-mount, R-mount, 3/4 mount):

> € 53,6 million (up 55,5 per cent)

 

Thats € 53,6 million = $ 78.6 million

 

Thats assume that the average item sell (to the retailer) would be $2000. This means that they sold about 39300 units to the retail trade in a year.

 

I agree the vast majority of these could have been lenses ( but at a less average - hence more units) but since Leicas previous fiscal problems where the lack of sales in film cameras I would assume that a large share of the manufacture would have been M8 - 9000 in 5 months doesn't appear unlikely to me.

 

interesting

[mike prevette]

Mine was from the first batch, purchased november 21 of last year, #310248x

 

Currently in solms, or NJ, or lost somwhere

[bayerische]

Apologies

 

For information... "9000 units in 5 months"... well I think that is crediable.

 

> Leica Camera AG

> Financial year 2006/07 (ending 31 March)

> Turnover: € 145,7 million (up 36,5 per cent)

> Profit: € 0,5 million (minus € 9,2 last year)

 

>Business areas turnover:

 

> 1. System cameras & lenses (M-mount, R-mount, 3/4 mount):

> € 53,6 million (up 55,5 per cent)

 

Thats € 53,6 million = $ 78.6 million

 

Thats assume that the average item sell (to the retailer) would be $2000. This means that they sold about 39300 units to the retail trade in a year.

 

I agree the vast majority of these could have been lenses ( but at a less average - hence more units) but since Leicas previous fiscal problems where the lack of sales in film cameras I would assume that a large share of the manufacture would have been M8 - 9000 in 5 months doesn't appear unlikely to me.

 

interesting

 

 

I don't know, but I don't believe Leica only charges $2000 per M8.

9000 M8 in 5months sounds like a lot.

[Shootist]

I don't know, but I don't believe Leica only charges $2000 per M8.

9000 M8 in 5months sounds like a lot.

Right I think the cost to dealers is more like 3700-4000.

Lets look at the 9000 figure. If they could produce 9000 units of anything/everything they sell in 5 month that's 150 days ±. That divided into 9000 = 60. That means they are sending out the door 60 units of something every day.

I don't see that.

[bradreiman]

got mine last november-31011xx

[pascal_meheut]

That means they are sending out the door 60 units of something every day.

 

I remember reading 50 per day at the beginning and more later.

[adan]

The serial numbers are random enough that I wouldn't get too excited about figuring production volume that way - plus I doubt they ship any on weekends.

 

OTOH the M8 is MOSTLY a snap-together design from modules (main board, CCD board, LCD board, off-the-shelf shutter, etc.), unlike the film cameras with their hand-assembled clockwork shutters - with the exception of the VF/RF construction and calibration. So I can imagine even a small company like Leica being able to handle several dozen a day.

 

Figure about 200 work days per year, and at 50 per day that's 10,000 per year (Laney's figure for M6 production in 1986 was 11,215) so I think that's a reasonable ballpark for the M8 as well.

 

On the original topic - saw another Leica demo body today at a Leica Day: 3100176 within a # or two.

 

Sorry, Mark, that hotshoe comment was from somebody's visit to Solms - though it was yours. S'cuse.

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[luigi bertolotti]

Given as sure that s/n are, in a certain range, not so related to date of production and current volumes, the speculations about M8 production figures are anyway intriguing... the prospected round output of 50 per day ----> 10.000/year is very reasonable, for me, and could be a good result for the Company... I hope they'll make public the figure in their financials disclosure... even if seems that Leica is on the way to be again a privately held company, with no listed shares, and this of course means not anymore detailed data released to the public.

 

Many of us, in this and other previous threads, declared the s/n of their M8 (or M8s...), but of course these are "disperse data"... if someone of the people who, time ago, made the application for analyzing the AGE of Leica owners, could make a simple application named "M8 Register" which any of us can update with his data (no much more than 4 fields: "serial number" "C(hrome) or B(lack)" "country" "delivery date"), I think it would be appreciated by all of us.