Olympus PEN Compact (28mm/3.5)- Ensamblado en Colombia

[maigo]

Found an eBay listing for Olympus PEN Original model (28mm/f3.5) with two labels inside - “Ensamblado en Colombia” and “Movifoto”.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304507135833
No references on the net to either except at this site but the author didn’t know any more about it.
https://www.philcameras.be/olympus/

It certainly would be odd of Olympus Japan to farm out assembly of an entire camera to Colombia in the 1960’s.
I suspect that this is either a repaired camera label or more likely an import duty workaround whereby the camera was mostly assembled in Japan with a few remaining steps completed in Colombia, maybe with local parts. A form of Chicken Tax loophole.
https://www.thoughtco.com/chicken-tax-4159747

Does anyone have concrete information about the labels?

 

[maigo]

Serial Number 433888

 

[zuiko85]

That would be a new one on me, and I’ve always had at least one of that 2 lug model since 1971. The serial number indicates a later production run, Olympus started serial numbers at 100K so that would be well into that cameras run. No idea about your idea of getting around import tax but it sounds plausible.
Still have 4 working Pen’s, a very early Sanko Shojii model, a later Olympus one, and Pen F and FV. My own experience is that the 2 blade, B-1/25-1/200 Copal in these early Pen’s is more likely to be working than the 5 blade Copal shutters in the Pen S.
Fine little camera, and the .5x projected bright frame viewfinder, if clean, is beautiful.