Mr. CLA'd of course! does it again...

batterytypehah!

batterytypehah!

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He found two morons who have bid each other up to $610, with 12 hours to go, for -- a humble Bessa 66 (Skopar 3.5/7.5cm in Compur Rapid).

http://cgi.ebay.com/Voigtlander-Bes...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item45f1140a03

Depending on what you make of the gap in the upper strut hinge (at best: needs a little push every time you unfold / at worst: lens will never be straight), this camera is worth maybe 1/10th of that.

I just don't get it. Have these guys even noticed that for the entire time of this listing, there's also been a Bessa 66 Heliar for $295 BIN/Best Offer? :bang:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Voigtlander-Bes...ViewItemQQptZFilm_Cameras?hash=item35a729f6e3

Minor cosmetic issues and slow-ish shutter, granted. But a seller who's completely up front about what the item is and isn't, as opposed to blabbering on and on about "vaunted" this and "top notch" that.

My take: An ebay seller's trustworthiness is inversely proportional to the number of exclamation marks they use. An ebay buyer's intelligence is inversely proportional to how often they increase their bid.
 
I've been keeping my eye on a 105mm APO Lanthar mounted to a Graphic lens board. It was at $200 when I first saw it.

Evil Bay Link

My guess is the C6 Bessa 66 with a Skopar must be more of collector's item.

Imagine what the Heliar version would sell for if was "CLA'd Of Course!"
 
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Must have a Bessa 66 lying around somewhere......... Ah, here it is. A Voigtar 75mm 1:3,5 lens and a Prontor II shutter. Hmmmm, should give it a CLA of course.

Too bad the d.m..d filter broke away last millenium. But who knows, seeing these posts gives again hope for a good sell ;-)
 
if you go by feedback,the bessa 66 seller has 99.7% positive with over 4400 transactions - surely that must be hard to achieve if the items he sells are regularly wonky. Also has an interesting site with some detail about various MF folders he no doubt sells. Buyer beware always applies but i'd not have picked this seller as an issue i have to say. YMMV.
 
jmilkins said:
if you go by feedback,the bessa 66 seller has 99.7% positive with over 4400 transactions - surely that must be hard to achieve if the items he sells are regularly wonky. Also has an interesting site with some detail about various MF folders he no doubt sells. Buyer beware always applies but i'd not have picked this seller as an issue i have to say. YMMV.
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A number of unpleasant experiences have been documented here: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26972
 
jmilkins said:
if you go by feedback,the bessa 66 seller has 99.7% positive with over 4400 transactions - surely that must be hard to achieve if the items he sells are regularly wonky. Also has an interesting site with some detail about various MF folders he no doubt sells. Buyer beware always applies but i'd not have picked this seller as an issue i have to say. YMMV.
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People like me in my younger and more foolish days may be responsible for that - years ago I bought a (serviced and advertised as working perfectly) Perkeo II and left positive feedback before testing it. Turns out the frame counter was broken and it became a glorified Perkeo I. Postage costs meant that returning it was pretty much pointless.

My fault for not checking out the camera first, of course, and one lives and learns - but it's worth bearing in mind that good feedback doesn't necessarily mean that what is on offer is always as described.
 
chippy said:
nah, it definitely doesnt rate amongst the top end of voitlander offerings, it a Baby Bessa Junior which is the lower end version sold at the time as an alternative to the more expensive Bessa 66 (called Baby Bessa as well) that has the built in viewfinder and frame counter (available with scopar or heliar)..

that particular Baby Bessa Jr looks like it is one of the late post-war models w/scopar and c/rapid with flash sync (asuming he hasnt changed the lens and shutter which he IS known to do) and improved pop up finder, normally the Baby Bessa Junior only has Voigtar in prontor II

so i guess it might be somewhat collectable to someone collecting Bessa's but its hardly worth $600+ :eek:
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C6 and "collectable" don't even belong in the same paragraph. Only god alone knows what combination of shutter and lens that started out with, and it almost certainly isn't original. Very little that passes through his hands is. Even if it escaped relatively unscathed, it isn't anywhere close to $600 worth though -- not even half that. Somebody's bidding war got way out of hand!
 
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jmilkins said:
if you go by feedback,the bessa 66 seller has 99.7% positive with over 4400 transactions - surely that must be hard to achieve if the items he sells are regularly wonky. Also has an interesting site with some detail about various MF folders he no doubt sells. Buyer beware always applies but i'd not have picked this seller as an issue i have to say. YMMV.
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While you definitely need to check the feedback, it can be deceptive if you don't actually read it. I know of at least two people who sent him positive feedback after being badly burned. One of them said it was because he didn't want to give negative feedback to "the god" of camera repair!

Also, I have been sent three of his cameras for repair and have seen the results of his work up close, personal, and in intimate detail. Now admittedly, people send me cameras that are in less than ideal condition, so I don't get to see anyone's greatest examples of camera repair, but I can't imagine anyone doing work that was that bad and getting paid for it. On the last one, the shutter, once opened up, looked like it had been dredged in sludge -- "CLA'd, of course!"
 
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right-oh, and thank you folks. I stand fully corrected and happy to be so. The great benefit of RFF is that, odds on, someone here has been suckered by a seller somewhere and I am more trustung of RFF "feedback" than ebay feedback.

But that poses a question - where does one find a source of reliable folders for someone wanting to give one a try?
 
Who can figure out eBay buyers:

A while a go I was looking for some small device (can't even remember what it was now) that an eBay seller had listed for $39.00 BIN in several listings along with the same item listed as an auction with minimal starting bid. The auctions consistently went above the price of the BIN ... what the? :eek:

People are absolute cattle at times! :D
 
I have a bessa 66 with uncoated heliar 66 f3.5. The lens is very soft, softer than a 3 elements novar. Yes, it is an heliar (at least it has 5 elements), and yes, it is properly adjusted. A big dissapointment. I wonder how many people that say that the heliar is a great lens have actually tried one. On the contrary a later 80 f3.5 color skopar, from a perkeo I suppose, is very sharp

Javier
 
wupdigoj said:
I have a bessa 66 with uncoated heliar 66 f3.5. The lens is very soft, softer than a 3 elements novar. Yes, it is an heliar (at least it has 5 elements), and yes, it is properly adjusted. A big dissapointment. I wonder how many people that say that the heliar is a great lens have actually tried one. On the contrary a later 80 f3.5 color skopar, from a perkeo I suppose, is very sharp

Javier
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Have you ever taken the lens apart and cleaned the elements?
 
thank you for options on finding folders folks. plenty of options i see. now just a matter of determining which ones are the choice picks.
 
Agree about Kodak models and lenses being confusing, but of course there's help out there:
http://kodak.3106.net/index.php

One of those Senior Six-16 to 120 panoramic conversions is on my list of projects. I have the Six-16. Best darn folding bed I have ever seen on a pocketable camera. You could hang a fridge door with those hinges.
 
I picked up my Bessa 66 at a flea market for $20. Works perfectly, nice results. Don't know which lens is on it though. It's the model with the swing-away yellow filter, which always tears off.
 
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