PH. Have you any information on when the 4b was made? I've read late 50's but don't know if that's correct or not.
Thank you,
Ed
* Dates: The Alnea (new body, new, wider bayonet, new lenses) model 4 and onwards, was launched in 1952. Yours and the other b models started production in 1959. Several modifications. On earlier models,the rapid return mirror returned when the finger was removed from the shutterbutton, now it snapped down at once.
* Numbers & fakes: Even Thewes has a few gaps in his list, but it is a wise move to look at serial numbers and examine new-looking Alpas closely, given the prices asked. The factory, and Heitz in the US, were able to furnish spares even 30years later, and just like Leica, did modernize camaras to order, but they kept records. At least the Ballaigues modification records are reflected in the lists that Thewes has published. He notes that for instance a type 4 no 30139 built in 1952 was returned to the factory in 1958 and furnished with a prisma etc.turning it into a model 5.
The fakes of the rarer versions of the Alpa 10&11 were produced by others after the spares hoard mysteriously disappeared when the facory closed. When I last visited Pignons to have an Alpa serviced, a few years before they closed, mr. Bourgeois pointed out that they also had spares and would repair their early models. In spite of this, I do not believe that any "fakes" of the Alneas were assembled. At the time of the fake assembly scam, there was not so much money to be made out of the Alnea series as from the extremely rare type 11 half- frames and microfilm bodies. The considerable cost of assembling from parts would not pay it way. Key components from the much older Alnea spares stock may also have been consumed by then. Hence even if the number of your specimen had not been revealed as the victim of a typo in the Alpa list book, it would still have been a genuine Alnea.
p.
