Some advice and help on a Leica M3 purchase

[MacDaddy]

I may have an opportunity to purchase a true one owner Leica from a student of mine. All I know at this point is that her husband purchased the Leica in Germany and emigrated to the USA with it around 50 years ago. She says he maintained it meticulously and it is fully original. She believes it is an M3 with one of the standard 50mm lenses for that time period.
That is ALL I know for the moment. She will let me come see and examine it soon.
What should I be looking for when I do? Presuming it IS an M3, what should I expect if it has simply been used carefully and never CLA'ed during all this time? How do I tell if it is functioning properly or is simply a very expensive repair just waiting for me to buy it?
Any input or suggestions, including a fair price offer for her would be appreciated. Of course, once I can actually lay hands on it I can provide more information for you all to help with. Thanks in advance.

 

[fixbones]

Mac,

With regards to what to look for when buying a used Leica, i think you'll be hard pressed to find a more concise and better information than the one Stephen Gandy has on his website here

With regards to price, perhaps have a look at the camera and run a comparison to the prices on Ebay.

My 2 aussie cents.....

 

[K5HJ]

You'll find lots of good info courtesy of the Head Bartender at:
http://www.cameraquest.com/classics.htm

Randy

 

[Jamie Pillers]

I was in a similar circumstance recently. A friend offered me his M3 + Collapsing Summicron (a common combination from the 50's era... like yours). The camera had a few little dings around the top plate and the usual bright lines and tripod marks on the bottom. The covering material was still in pretty good shape... no tears or missing pieces. The viewfinder was clear and the rangefinder seem to align well. Then I 'tested' the shutter speeds by listening as I triggered it at each speed, starting at 1 second. It sounded like about a second. Then I listened to each faster speed. They all sounded to be about twice as fast as the last one. So.... close enough. Then I looked inside the camera, from both the lens mount side and the film loading side. The curtains looked excellent. I held the the camera up to the sun (without the lens on of course) while looking through it from both sides, to see if there were any pinholes in the curtains. There were none.

Then I looked at the lens. I first looked at the aperture blades as I turned the f-stop ring through its full range. The blades appeared to move properly/smoothly, with no changes in shape. Then I opened the blades to f2 and held the lens up to a bright background and looked through it from both sides looking for anything unusual looking inside. Nothing there but a few specs of dust and a couple of tiny bubbles... normal. Then I looked across the front and back elements trying to see if there were any significant scratches and/or cleaning marks. There were only a few very minor cleaning marks on both front and back.. normal.

So.... I gave my friend $700. A good, not great, deal. (You can check prices at KEH.com. The camera I've just described is probably a KEH "EX" grade.)

Hope this helps, MacD.

 

[Keith]

Make sure the rangefinder itself has contrast and there is no delamination of the prism or deterioration of the glue holding it together ... this can be seen through the front of the viewfinder with a strong light.

Everything else can be repaired quite inexpensively but a useless rangefinder mechanism is not a cheap repair. I speak from experience here having bought an M3 off eBay a few years ago that had this issue ... I still have the camera but it now owes me twice what it's actually worth! 🙄

Good luck! 🙂

 

[thetooth]

one thing with the slow speeds if they are only a touch off sometime just working the camera at those speeds will bring them back around . i have a IIf that was this way and now it's pretty close to my m's .


also if the vulcanite is in bad shape don't let that scare you that's a easy fix from http://www.cameraleather.com/ and half the work will already be done for you .

and for the lens take a small flashlight and shine it through all the imperfections will pop out .