My only gripe is that the folks who sold it listed it as "mint".
On ebay, "mint" usually just means it looks good. It doesn't mean it functions -- at all. "Excellent condition" usually means there isn't too much rust, and all of the leatherette will have to be replaced. "Operating condition" usually means the shutter speeds are no more than four stops off but as for appearance, well, someone has apparently given it to their pet bulldog as a chew toy. "Good condition" usually means only a few parts are missing (one will be the rear lens element) and it needs a new shutter. "Good condition for it's age" means the shutter is rusted out, the front lens element is missing along eith the rear lens element, the middle element is opaque with fungus, the bellows are like lace, and pretty much the only part of the camera that is usable, once you have patched it with Bondo, is the body. Any item description that contains the phrase "I don't know anything about cameras, but..." means it was run over by a truck, or maybe used for batting practice, at some point.
It is important to know what the most common problems are with any type of camera you are going to buy on ebay and to ask if it has them. If you don't ask, you can pretty much safely assume it has all of them. For example, ANY agfa you get on ebay is likely to have certain specific problems. Agfa used a type of grease that reacts with the brass threads, forms polymerase chains and hardens like plastic (
just like plastic) over the years. They also used vinyl to cover their bellows. Well, vinyl will become brittle and start cracking after about 5 or 10 years, and these things are 50 years old. This means that you can pretty much
count on the focus and rangefinder being frozen and it is almost a certainty that the bellows will need to be replaced.
It is just a fact of life that if you get an Agfa, then you are going to have to heat up the front and middle lens elements to soften the crud cementing them together, unscrew them from one another, pick all the crud out with a pin, scrub what's left out with a toothbrush, lube it and put it back together. Then you are going to have to recollimate the lens. Only then will you be able to focus the camera. You will have to do the same with the rangefinder, if it has one, because they used the same kind of grease there. Then you are going to have to replace the bellows (fortunately, Agfa made this part easy, at least on Isolettes/Speedexes and on some of the better Records; the unfortunate part is that 6x6 replacement bellows are getting very hard to find and you will probably have to have a set custom-made).
Like Andrew says, the renovated Isolettes selling on ebay usually go for around $300 (I'm not going to call them restored, because Isolettes never came with brown leather and blue bellows). However, if you do it yourself, and can find a set of new old stock bellows (or a Kodak 66 with bellows in good shape), you can fix it up like new for about $30 to $50.
This is a Speedex Special R with Kodak 66 bellows:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showfull.php?photo=72713
This is a plain old Isolette with generic "new old stock" 6x6 Kodak bellows:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showfull.php?photo=80533
Both solutions work fine, look good, and are a
lot less expensive than having a bellows custom-made.
