Trick or Treat?

[sabears]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

 See 305405981751 item on the evilb. 🤑

[Advertisement]

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

[luigi bertolotti]

OUCH ! Never bought a camera on eby... but this is tempting... too good to be true ?

 

[pgk]

1 hour ago, luigi bertolotti said:

..... too good to be true ?

It is a first sale from a newly registered ebay seller 🤨. I won't be bidding!

Edited February 23, 2024 by pgk

[willeica]

Seller in Scotland is an individual and not a dealer. It looks like a one-off hammer paint job on the camera and the Visoflex. 'Auction' runs until Tuesday, so the price is likely to rise. Like Luigi I have rarely bought anything on eBay and certainly not any Leica cameras. I tend to use the 'proper auctions' or dealers that I trust.

William 

[luigi bertolotti]

2 hours ago, pgk said:

It is a first sale from a newly registered ebay seller 🤨. I won't be bidding!

Neither me🤔.. But am curios to see what will be... 

[spydrxx]

I've bought several Leica bodies and lenses from Ebay with only one issue in 16 years. However, each week a different seller with zero previous sales or feedback offers a much more expensive piece of Leica gear for between $5-700 USD. It is a scam as best as I can tell in all cases. Buyer beware of "newbie" listings well below market prices.

[pgk]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

5 hours ago, willeica said:

I tend to use the 'proper auctions' or dealers that I trust.

Where such an item with an auctioneer's backing for its validity could make a lot of money. I find it intriguing that it has had a film put through it🤔.

[willeica]

1 hour ago, spydrxx said:

I've bought several Leica bodies and lenses from Ebay with only one issue in 16 years. However, each week a different seller with zero previous sales or feedback offers a much more expensive piece of Leica gear for between $5-700 USD. It is a scam as best as I can tell in all cases. Buyer beware of "newbie" listings well below market prices.

This one is for an item for which there is no known ‘market price’. Secondly, it is currently at a ‘low’ price, but it could go much higher before the auction ends. As for the lack of prior listings, everyone will have their own view, but it could be wrong to assume that there will be no bidders.

William

[Anbaric]

Price doesn't mean anything at this point as it's an auction with no 'buy it now' option. I (and many other people) never bid on anything important until the last minute.

Without provenance, you'd have to assume it's been refinished by a third party. Anyone interested probably hasn't got enough time to get a response from the archive about whether the (starred) serial number suggests anything other than this.

They say 'We will accept a bank transfer for this item'. I don't know if that is meant to imply 'only', which would be very suspicious, but I wouldn't pay by this method in any case. If you stick rigidly to the standard payment system and aren't tricked by a scammer's messages into making any transactions outside it, ebay are usually good about refunds. But bank transfers are explicitly not covered by this protection, and of course you'd have no credit card protection either:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy?id=4210

Edited February 23, 2024 by Anbaric

[zeitz]

25 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

I have bought TONS of camera gear on eBay (I have over 700 transactions)

I have over 950 transactions on ebay over a 23 year span.  (Not all transactions were for camera equipment.)  I have only had one bad transaction which implies 99.9% honest people.  The seller refused to ship a Nikon Model 1 reflex housing even though I had paid for it.  Ebay refunded by money.  Ironically the same reflex housing showed up at Dan Tamarkin's annual auction a year later.  I won it again, and the second time at a lower price.  For me Ebay is an essential market from tiny camera screws to extremely rare and unusual camera equipment.

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, Al Brown said:

No, because it clearly says PayPal under Payments. (See image 😊)

Sure, but scammers (and maybe others) sometimes try to work outside the system and persuade you to pay some other way even when they list PP (I think they are obliged to offer electronic payment in the listing, even if they don't want to use it), e.g.:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Buying-on-eBay-DND/Seller-wants-payment-via-bank-transfer/qaq-p/6866745

If I had this kind of message, I would walk away.

Edited February 23, 2024 by Anbaric

[UliWer]

When somebody is new on ebay and offers something for sale for the first time the buyer's payment is put "on hold" by ebay as a security - for the buyer. New sellers are clearly told this before the auction starts. If the seller sends the items and the buyer confirms that he got it, the payment will be released immediately. I cannot complain about this. 

[Anbaric]

There may well be genuine sellers caught by this delay, and unaware that the funds can be released sooner, but this can also be used as an excuse by someone who wants you to pay outside ebay for more dubious reasons, as can unspecified 'problems with paypal'. Just be aware that payments made by bank transfer aren't protected, whatever the reason.

[Pyrogallol]

There are little bargains to be found on e Bay if you keep trawling through, which I am trying to stop doing. The bargains get snapped up very quickly, but I have never spent a lot of money on anything, £200-300 at the most. Equally I have sold a lot of items there as it is a good place to clear out things you no longer need that are too small in value to be of interest to a dealer.

[250swb]

Wow, wow, wow. But all looks genuine to me, he's definitely not a calculating evil mastermind given it ends on a Tuesday lunchtime. I just hope he knows how much it could be worth. Dot the i's and cross the t's and eBay isn't too scary, the last IIIf I bought was by making a 'best offer' and when it arrived there was a six month old receipt from Malcom Taylor for a full service that cost more than the camera!  

[beoon]

I cannot find any mention of this type of camera in any of my Leica books, the grey hammertone MD cameras of a similar period have a very different finish.

The seller is actually only about 1 hours drive from myself, looks too good to be true.

https://f22cameras.com/en/leica-m2-hammertone-repainted-by-takahashi-studio-japan

 

Edited February 24, 2024 by beoon
link added

[sabears]

1 hour ago, beoon said:

I cannot find any mention of this type of camera in any of my Leica books, the grey hammertone MD cameras of a similar period have a very different finish.

The seller is actually only about 1 hours drive from myself, looks too good to be true.

https://f22cameras.com/en/leica-m2-hammertone-repainted-by-takahashi-studio-japan

 

... try writing to him asking to see the item in person... 😎

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, beoon said:

I cannot find any mention of this type of camera in any of my Leica books, the grey hammertone MD cameras of a similar period have a very different finish.

The seller is actually only about 1 hours drive from myself, looks too good to be true.

https://f22cameras.com/en/leica-m2-hammertone-repainted-by-takahashi-studio-japan

You wouldn't even have had to send your M2 to Japan to get a hammertone finish. The late Peter Grisaffi used to do this down in Luton:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotopiahk/8747678420

There is another M2 hammertone (described as a repaint) on ebay right now.

Nowhere in the 305405981751 listing does it say this is the factory finish, and taking the auction at face value the seller may have no idea themselves.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[zeitz]

2 hours ago, Anbaric said:

taking the auction at face value the seller may have no idea themselves

One of the issues I have in general with real auctions is that the provenance of the item is impossible to trace backwards because the owner is anonymous.  There have been a number of items on the Leitz Photographica Auction recently that I truly question the authenticity.  These items were from Soviet era manufacturers.  The prices were so high that it is highly profitable for a skilled artisan to manufacture them.  At least on ebay a potential buyer can contact the real seller, often the owner, during the auction.

[Anbaric]

38 minutes ago, zeitz said:

One of the issues I have in general with real auctions is that the provenance of the item is impossible to trace backwards because the owner is anonymous.  There have been a number of items on the Leitz Photographica Auction recently that I truly question the authenticity.  These items were from Soviet era manufacturers.  The prices were so high that it is highly profitable for a skilled artisan to manufacture them.  At least on ebay a potential buyer can contact the real seller, often the owner, during the auction.

In this case the seller could be contacted, but as it sounds like they are selling an inherited collection, they may know no more about the provenance of the camera than is stated in the listing, which isn't nearly enough to identify this as a camera in its original condition. I suppose if this one turned up in a major specialised auction with a catalogue, there would at least be time to ask Leica about the serial number - if nothing special were recorded, I think the assumption would be that the finish is a third party job. That may add some modest value to a standard M2, because some people like this sort of thing, but I imagine there would be a very large gap between the value of a repaint and a previously unknown factory original. As it is, maybe someone who has done their homework with the archive already and knows something we don't will get a bargain. Or maybe someone who thinks this camera is more than it is will end up overpaying for a common repaint, and as it's a non-returnable item with no specific claims about originality in the listing they'll be stuck with it.