A rare O-series Leica camera from 1923-24 ? one of just over 20 made to test the market ? raised more than to £240,000 at auction on Saturday.
As we reported last month, the camera, carrying the serial number ‘107’, is in ‘excellent and fully working condition’, according to the auctioneers in Vienna.
?The Leica No. 107 was sold for the highest sum ever achieved at an auction for a 35mm camera or a Leica,? claimed a spokesman for the Westlicht Photographica auction.
The camera sold for ?336,000 to a ‘private European collector’.
It is the seventh camera in the legendary O-series, which preceded the launch of the mass-produced 35mm Leica camera, the Leica 1, in 1925.
Experts also believe it is the ‘first ever Leica to be exported’, with the word ‘Germany’ engraved on the camera’s top-plate.
‘It was shipped to New York for the US patent application,’ they explained.
