Enlarger prices ... amazing

images39 said:

I bought a used LPL 4500 II VCCE enlarger about 7 years ago, and have been happy as a pig in mud ever since. It's beautifully designed, and I love the VCCE head, because you can change contrast with little to no change in exposure time. The fine focus adjustment is smooth as silk. From what I've seen, these enlargers (used) have definitely gone up in price since then.

Dale

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I bought a used LPL 4550XLG 10 or 15 years ago in Craigslist, love using it. It sets next to my 52 year old Omega 4x5 enlarger that I bought new at the same price as the used LPL.

I have an LPL7700C, Kindermann branded. There is a lever, which will clamp down the film holder. What it does is to rise and lower the mixing chamber assembly. This will not only clamp down the holder but also make a snug connection to minimise light leaks. Not that it is totally light tight, but good enough. I only taped a black bit of sturdy paper to the front of the enlarger head and flip it down and insert it underneath the film holder to take out any light that could reflect from my face and onto the paper. I actually only started doing that when I colour printed some time ago. I guess I kept on doing it.

Not knowing other enlargers, I really do like my LPL. When I first colour printed I had some very weired colour effects. Stuff you couldn't do if you wanted to. I opened the head and discovered that mixing chamber and how the dichroic filters work, took out the mixing chamber made from styrofoam. I suspected it might be yellowed and decayed but it was in perfect, bright white condition.

When I reassembled the thing colour printing worked perfectly fine. I can't remember the details, but I probably noticed the rising and lowering mechanism to work without literally a hick up when it briefly got stuck on the way down, previously. So the assembly wasn't sitting in there correctly, I guess. The enlarger was shipped to me in one piece by the original owner. Instead of unscrewing the column from the baseboard they modified a card board box by cutting a hole and adding another box. Like those huge carburetors coming out of the bonnet of some American muscle cars. This parcel transport might thrown the box out of its position.

I was offered a free Durst medium format enlarger and put it into storage, rather than have it destroyed. I'm using the Durst film holder with my repro stand and digicam to digitise negatives. The LPL will soon join the Durst because I'm moving up to 4x5 and I don't have space for more than one enlarger. My darkroom is a table and a shelf to my own in my brothers basement boiler room. And I'm really glad to have that, otherwise there would be no place for wet printing for me.

It was the low end of the LPL that KHB lists as discontinued, not the middle range. Much potential for confusion of the models, as Saunders used 6700 and 670 for the low and middle range and LPL uses 6700 and 7700. The diffusion models are 6x7; condenser version of the low end is 6x6, model number 6600.

voceumana said:

It was the low end of the LPL that KHB lists as discontinued, not the middle range.

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There actually is a 35mm only LPL enlarger - the 3301D - which is condensor only, and which I think of as the "low end", but is still current.
I take your point though!

There's still the intrepid kit that converts their 4x5 (possibly any 4x5--I haven't researched it) into an enlarger for 35mm, 120 and 4x5. https://intrepidcamera.co.uk/products/intrepid-enlarger-kit

michael_r said:

I am happy with my 4x5, but I’d like to get a De Vere 504, for no particular reason. I don’t need more than one enlarger but it would be nice to have.

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I've got both and love my DeVere; but if I were only shooting 4x5 or smaller, I'd be very happy with my LPL VCCE!

I paid about $150.00 for my Durst M601 in 1974(?); that is equivalent to approx. $750.00 in today’s dollar.

DREW WILEY said:

They're generally after consumer electronics, guns, or cool things like designer tennis shoes. But this couple was so wigged out that they probably didn't even know what there were after, and that's what made them so potentially dangerous. When their house was raided, they had piles of stolen stuff from multiple burglaries they didn't even attempt to sell. Detectives were aware of them all along, but waited until they had ample evidence for a conviction before moving on them. That's generally the case. The pro burglars are a different species. Yes, they use junkies as scouts, but otherwise try to not draw attention to themselves, plan things out, trigger diversionary alarms to keep police busy, and target expensive neighborhoods. This past season they took advantage of downtown protests to clean out an entire car dealership, while cops were tied up elsewhere. "Sideshows" do the same thing. And one year, they triggered a lot of commercial alarms and cleaned out a Ferrari dealership, went joyriding, and then abandoned all the vehicles, some wrecked. Just for an adrenaline rush I guess.

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Our area had a similar thing happen back in November. My shop got completely cleaned out. They took everything that was small enough to carry and looked expensive, and a lot of stuff that wasn't really that expensive, but not exactly easy to buy anymore. Fortunately, I have insurance, and they did pay out so I got an opportunity to basically start over from scratch and do some camera and lens selection revisions. Still building out some of my film camera selections, but over on the digital side, was able to get back to normal pretty quick. I also added security cameras in the shop that upload to the internet, so next time, I'll at least have footage, even if they disconnect them, I have multiple cameras that cover each other, so footage from at least one of them will end up online before they can get to all of them or get to the internet connection.

It was on my day job I had to routinely deal with theft issues. Most of the hits we took were the few times over the years someone in the warehouse got hooked on drugs and began bulk theft. But in terms of the contractor customer base, it was about three times a week. About 30% of all tool sales were insurance replacement. They averaged between 18K to 40K per incident. I know one individual who was taken three times in the same months, nearly 20K each time. Sometimes they'd be followed home, and an entire loaded vehicle stolen after hours and stripped somewhere. One guy has his van stripped of 40K right in a Home Depot parking lot, even the revolver he kept in there. Good thing, cause he was hot afterwards, and knew where to look. Sometimes there were incidents of junkies trying to sell hot tools directly to jobsites, inadvertently even to the same parties they stole them from - that led to some pretty severe beatings they wouldn't easily forget. Then there were entire truckload warehouse heists from wholesalers or distribution centers, sometimes for months or years on end. If junkies get caught, there's not a lot that can be done with them. But if the big fences or internal schemes get convicted, it's hard time. That happens too. The big box outlets have severe internal theft issues from management itself. Career thieves can be interesting. They can be real clever and even smart IQ-wise, but be really stupid in other respects, cocky and bragging one day, floating face-down in the Bay the next. They're always pushing their luck a step too far.

DREW WILEY said:

They can be real clever and even smart IQ-wise, but be really stupid in other respects, cocky and bragging one day, floating face-down in the Bay the next.

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There has to be a market somewhere for these stolen power tools?

Tom Kershaw said:

There has to be a market somewhere for these stolen power tools?

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ebay, swap meets...

There's a massive market for hot tools. There are several kinds of them. The big boys shuffle mass shipments around from state to state to make them harder to track, or in a large states like this one (California) between north (SF area) and south (Los Angeles area). Random stuff shows up at flea markets or street markets.

Some schemes are brazen. I ran one of the biggest Festool dealerships in the US. There were thieves who specialized in this brand only, because instead of the mere 5% a fence would pay on an ordinary power tool, these could get up to 80% value, and are very expensive to begin with. I had a fully alarmed actual vault for our large inventory. But incoming entire truckloads would be intercepted. There were also targeted thefts of cabinet shops and contractors etc, up to $100,000 losses at a time. The primary fence in this region even had a website showing a fictitious store. Actual Festool dealerships are under strict contract. But this fictitious one offered discount pricing. If you called the phone number (which was changed almost daily), a person would tell you there was no need to bother driving all the way to the SF store. He would conveniently meet you at some intermediate "back alley" location for the transaction, no doubt with an armed buddy around the corner. Clever, but there's nowhere to graduate with a degree in cleverness like that except to the Penitentiary, if one is lucky enough not to get shot first himself.

Of course, dealers like myself weren't exactly quiet when incoming orders were shortchanged or missing. Several of our complaints landed the perpetrators with free tuition to a dozen years or so apiece in "summer camp" behind bars. In the long run, there is no such thing as a smart thief. The boomerang inevitably returns one way or another.

From 35 years ago, I recall a rumor floating around Los Angeles-area that a certain gang would pay $20,000? for a loaded Snap-On tool van. Like fine lenses, quality tools are always in demand.

My Snap On guy was murdered and they stole his van. I heard a rumor they caught the guys that did it. Hope it was true.

So sorry to hear this.