If Leica dies (even more) and the brand image and the fans are dying too, what will be left in the end? Will that camera be anything worth in 50 years?
I find collectibles like these really hard as something to put your money in.
edit: lots of auctions seem to only reach the low estimate, some are unsold. probably doesn't work as expected.
I'd be very very surprized if that camera wouldn't be extremely collectible in 50 years time. To be honest the only cameras more iconic than this are the Apollo 11 Hasselblads which are currently on the Moon.
There is an old joke, 4 art collectors are stranded on a desert island with only a Picasso painting (or, a rare camera), and they all managed to make a living.
That reminds me of the saying, "The lottery is a tax on the stupid." To me, it's also reasonable to say, "Buying lottery tickets is a cry of the desperate."
By the way, while we are on the subject of gambling, I don't like the phrase "casino capitalism" because the term "capitalism" is usually a smokescreen which distorts and obfuscates how, for example, the US economy actually works (hint: the powerful collude to enrich themselves). But I do like the "casino" part of the phrase.
In the same way poker is only an engaging game if there are stakes, and the 2 universal stakes are "money" and "time".
Anyhow, this is a cool artifact. I'm not sure if its 14 million metric units of cool or not but I'm not part of that market.
Uses for this include:
1. Show it off! It's cool!
2. Make 2 more of them, sell them both secretly, keep the original
3. Look for DNA from the leica inventor, make an army baby leica inventors
4. put in a box, move it to another country, sell it and not pay taxes
5. look at it, it's cool
6. sell it to someone else with lots of money and in interest in camera stuff
The big question of course is: does out civilization and society mostly survive the next 50 years. If so, the value of that camera should be reasonably high, as it is basically the first compact photo camera and the ancestor to all 35mm photo cameras. So if there is still a market for historic items towards the end of this century, this camera should be valuable.