It doesn't cost you anything at all to believe that what he's saying is true--and I see no reason to doubt him.
I mean, nowadays, I can identify each Leica film model at first glance, and I own an M3 and M6. But I wouldn't be able to tell the digital models apart without a bit of looking carefully, I've never owned and rarely handled one. And when I was a beginning photographer, *my* reaction would have been just this guy's: it's a Leica, I've heard the name so I know it's "good", but I have no clue what exactly it is.
(I once handled a second-hand Leica R9 in a German camera shop when I was starting off, and thought it was kinda cool--but expensive for a used camera and *huge*--and I had *no idea* of its place in the Leica lineup, or even at that point what a rangefinder camera even was let alone that *they* were why Leica was famous.)
Also, if the previous owner's relatives had no idea what his cameras were worth (I'm seriously thinking that when *I* die, because I don't have any close family, *my* cameras may end up in a thrift shop--and now, I've got *niiiiice* stuff), and the camera was obviously broken, there's a good chance they did just toss it in the Goodwill box. And the local store, who knows if they even bothered to look the camera up when it came in smashed up. *Someone* must have had some kind of idea, if they charged *that* much for a broken camera that they probably knew very little about. But it was *broken*, it didn't turn on, and who there would know how much it *might* be worth in that state? This guy almost didn't buy it, and *I'd* have hesitated, too, if I thought it might cost up to $2000 to fix--not outlandish in Leica world, and in that case, 375 wasted dollars for me.
(One time in London I started up a photography class at school, and asked the faculty if anyone had any old cameras they'd like to donate. One guy gave me a mint Olympus OM-1n with a couple of lenses that were very desirable and went for pretty good coin--I told him about this and asked if he wanted to reconsider just giving it away, and his reply was "nah"--and someone else, I never could figure out who, dropped in a Yashica T4. *I* knew what it was, but they had no clue. That last one, I actually ended up keeping myself--I went to the thrift shop and bought a couple of point-and-shoots for the class to replace it, to assuage my guilt!)
We're geeks on here, so we know all this stuff. Leica's marketing must work--that guy knew that a Leica was somehow "special", but had no idea why or what he had, or if it was worth dropping that much cash on something that was clearly damaged and might *never* work (at least affordably). I've been there before, I know just how he felt. I vote real.
