I'm getting rid of my 4x5 stuff (shooting digital and 8x10 now). Everything is gone except apo-lanthar 15cm 4.5 - late coated version. This is the best 4x5 lens I ever had. I was trying to justify keeping it but it won't give me enough coverage for 8x10...
I did some research on ebay - apo-lanthars are priced $1500+ which I think is way too much. I can't find any other current price information for this lens. If anyone bought or sold this lens recently, would you mind sharing the price?
I'm not in the market for one, but $400-700 sounds fair. (One Linhof selected sold at around $400 (plus auction fees) in Sweden in Dec 07: http://www.lpfoto.se/... auction Apo-Lanthar.)
I think Bjorn is about right. About 3 years ago I bought a perfect one with a sticky shutter for $425 IIRC, so I ended up with about $525 in it. Prices went higher after I bought mine, but I doubt you'd get a kilobuck for a 150mm today. Maybe a 210mm, which I'd like to have, but I wasn't going to pay what people have been asking for them.
I bought mine, a Linhof select in an excellent shutter for I believe $750 a little less than 18 months ago. As far as I can tell by monitoring eBay and some other forums, they have continued to appreciate substantially since then, perhaps another 25-50%, but I don't know if they are fetching those sorts of prices more recently. It seems to me it's worth a run on eBay and see if you can hook some collectors not yet afflicted by the world's woes. It is still a very sought after and valuable lens for 4x5, it seems a pity to let it go without a try on the auction site; a generous reserve price might help you establish current value without much downside risk other than listing fees.
LJS
Thanks for info - I think something around $600-700 will be a good opening price for the auction.
By the way I tested it with my sony a700 (I mounted the lens on a macro bellows) - I was amazed by the absence of the chromatic abberations. Lens is corrected better than some of the modern lenses. Truly an APO lens. I have a pretty decent 100-300 minolta maxxum-APO lens and it shows more purple fringing than 50 year old APO-Lanthar.