Your best deal ever?

[sun of sand]

I'm very patient so
85% of my stuff could be listed here


The best
probably the tachihara, 90 4.5 grandagon, 150 sironar N, 12 fidelity holders, type 55, 545i, case
$500
Thanks, Scott G

 

[mwdake]

As a freebie.
A Vivitar VI enlarger with color head and a Jobo CPE2 with tons of Jobo stuff some of it new all for free from an older man that just wanted it to go to a good home.

Paid for.
A complete darkroom set up with an Omega D5 for $100.
Or, a really nice RB Graflex for $25, 3x4 though; but I still love it.

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

Ha ha. Free Rolleicord the neighbor found in his garage. He couldn't figure out where the battery went. I use the crap out of it still.

Free Leica SLR's and several lenses, plus a Rollei 35, all of it mint. Actually made some feeble attempts to talk him out of it. The premise was, at least the stuff will get used. I didn't have the heart to say, I don't have time to use the stuff I already have. If I don't get around to really putting it in service, I'll probably auction the stuff and give to a charity in his name. Is this acceptable?

 

[Wade D]

I bought a really nice Beseler 45MCRX with neg holders and lenses for all formats from a local Apug member for $175. She didn't need it any more, upgraded to an 8x10 DeVere.
Also bought a Maxxum 7000 with Tokina 28-200 lens on ebay for $40.

 

[Cliffy13]

Minolta SRT101b,Soligor 35-140,Rokkor 28mm f2.8,Rokkor 50mm f 1.7,Soligor 2x converter,Sunpak flashgun £18.99 in total

 

[sepiareverb]

Wow! Who was the silly person who sold you this?

It was in a used furniture shop. Saw the brown case of the Leica there with a tag on it $20. Asked if they had any more cameras and the ICA came out.

 

[R gould]

A barely used and mint weltyaflex tlr for twenty pounds, takes lovey photos, Richard

 

[jeffreyg]

Selling a set of 1953 baseball cards I collected as a kid for a (then new) Hasselblad 500cm with the 80mm and 150 mm lenses. I forgot I had the cards and found the at my parent's house after learning of someone looking to buy old cards.

 

[MattKing]

Arguably the $400.00 I spent in 1976 for the Mamiya C330 and lens I bought new from the store I was working in while going to university. That is assuming that the value includes the value I've got from that camera since.

My Omega D6 enlarger with Ilford Multigrade head, a bunch of Rodagon lenses, paper, 20x24 easel, etc. - $250.00 IIRC

Contax 167MT body with a bunch of useful B & W filters and a nice camera bag - $7.00 at a thrift store. I kept the filters and bag, and gave the camera body to another APUG member who makes very good use of Contax equipment, and was in need of a replacement for her camera body.

Canonet GIII 1.7 - $10.00 at a garage sale - I've got to get around to those new light seals! (the camera works fine though).

Olympus Trip 35 - $2.00 at the thrift store. This one is really banged up, but works great. See my most recent gallery photo for the results. I think that this will become my "leave in the car" camera.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Voightlander Vito IIa - free in 1962

Canon EOS-3 body in LN- condition - free a month ago

Hasselblads at todays prices

 

[Ricus.stormfire]

80% of my darkroom equipment (pick-up truck full of stuff) for about US$28 (R205) which included, Omega D5XL, Opemus 5a (both heads) Opemus 2a (which will become a lamp), Nikon and Rodenstock glass, and loads of other things I'm not going to list (trays, tanks, reels, paper, printwasher etc, etc, etc)

Cameras...well only a YashicaMat (early one with Lumaxar lenses) for about the same (Don't know if was a bargain but it's in mint condition ((or very near mint)) and people in these parts sell them for x3, x4, even x5 as much in worse condition...)

 

[jreitsma]

Best Deal...so far...

Folks;

I recently got the following camera at a local swap meet:

Canon
FTb
SSN 700609
w/50mm f/1.8 Canon SC Lens
Condition: appears that it has not been used at all..I'd say: MINT, MINT +.

Price: $20.00

Later-Joe

 

[Joachim_I]

A brand new Schneider-Kreuznach M-Componon 4.0/80mm lens for 59 Euro.

 

[Nikkorray]

It's been a good year acquiring darkroom equipment. While it's not rock bottom prices, I did manage to get a good deal on these items on craigslist:

Durst CLS450 with L1000 Stand & 3 Nikkor lenses (50mm, 75mm, 135mm) - $350
Kindermann 6 foot film dryer (can dry 20+ 35mm film) - $30
Versalab 16x20 print washer - $60
Saunders 16x20 easel (mint) - $125
Arkay 16x20 Print Dryer - $25

 

[darinwc]

Most of what I buy is either 1/2 the average value or 2x.. i get trigger happy sometimes and make some bad deals.
Lets see.. Nikon FM3a with 40mm f2.8 AIP pancake for $50.. sold the camera, lens is still sitting there, waiting for Nikon to come out with a F-mount pen type camera.
Canon FDn 50mm f1.2 for $25 (not the L version)
Olympus OM2n with 50mm f1.4 and 35mm f2 for $100

 

[darinwc]

Oh and a Yashica T4 for $2... sold for $150.. a week later i found another T4 for $2

..One think I find impossible to find locally is a nice used tripod.. they are all the crappy wobbly ones with plastic heads and no QR plate.

 

[Mr.3D]

Best deal by far was a Leica M1 with a Elcan 90mm/1.0 lens attached for $1000.00. Still have the M1 sold the lens on Ebay about 4 years ago for $15000.00 to some guy in Italy.


Here is a post I made to a Leica Forum about the lens and a photo.

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/discus_e/messages/2/204505.html


B

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I consider my 8x10" Sinar P with an extra long custom bellows a pretty good deal at $850.

I traded a box of 50 sheets of slightly past date 4x5" Provia 100F with a friend for a Voigtländer Petzval of around 10"/f:4. It turned out to be a good deal for both of us. My friend had gotten the lens as part of a trade with a camera store that went out of business, and I'd bought more of this short dated film than I could use, and a fair number of the shots that appeared in my friend's first book were made with that film.

Best deal ever was two Nagra miniature spy recorder sets I bought on eBay from a state government surplus liquidator for $90. They didn't use the brand "Nagra" anywhere in the description, and they misspelled "Kudelski." The photo was blurry and the description wasn't much more than "two tape recorders, condition unknown." I bought a projector from the same source, so I just found the Nagras accidentally, browsing through the seller's other listings. I recognized them as Nagras and figured they would be worth more than what I paid for parts, even if they didn't work. As it happened they were used in law enforcement and worked quite well. I didn't need two, so I sold one for a bit more than $1900. The other one I thought I would use to record sound for Super-8, so I kept it for a few years, bought an A/C power supply and new tapes for it for around $200, used it occasionally to record talks and lectures, and sold it eventually for $2600.

 

[darinwc]

Wow, I had no idea tape recorders still held any value. Were they reel-to-reel type or cassettes?

 

[Sparky]

Sweet deal on the Nagras, David...!! A bit of a fan myself... ever seen a Nagra T?? crazy machines...!

One of my sweetest and most memorable was getting a micromega critical focuser (the high end one - see also 'Peak') for $5 at a yard sale - being sold as a 'childrens microscope'.

 

[Sparky]

Wow, I had no idea tape recorders still held any value. Were they reel-to-reel type or cassettes?

I know a guy who mortgaged his house for a Nagra recorder with ruby guides... I think at the time (80s) they selling for around $60-80K....

they're reel to reel machines, of course...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=155ow-iLV9g

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

The Nagra SN series used open reel tapes the same width as cassette tape. The earliest models predated cassettes.

You can see one of the Nagras I had here--

Dead Link Removed

Click on "Top Rated" and scroll down.

There's a great scene in the movie, Diva, where the obsessed opera fan is making a recording and says "Nagra. Very, very sensitive." They could be synched to film, so the 1/4" recorders were very much the standard in the film industry for many years, well into the era of digital recording. I've seen a Nagra III that belonged to Dizzy Gillespie.

 

[telkwa]

Pentax LX with A50/1.7 & B+W Top-Pol filter for $175 CDN (about $140 US at the time).

 

[bdial]

One think I find impossible to find locally is a nice used tripod.. they are all the crappy wobbly ones with plastic heads and no QR plate

True 99.9% of the time in my experience. However, I bought a Linhof heavy duty pro (their biggest) with its geared center column and a pan head at a yard sale. It ranks very high in my list of good deals.

 

[Sirius Glass]

True 99.9% of the time in my experience. However, I bought a Linhof heavy duty pro (their biggest) with its geared center column and a pan head at a yard sale. It ranks very high in my list of good deals.

I got a good heavy one on evilBay directly from Amvona at a great price and I keep it in one of my cars. It is so heavy that I rarely use it.

Steve