Someone has a bad case of GAS

[richiedcruz]

Recently, I won an Agfa Clack off of Eb** for a really low price. When I got it and started to play with it, I found myself impressed with its simplicity and decided to track down an Agfa Click (6x6 version) to go with it. I went back to Eb** and found an Agfa Click and put a bid that I thought was WAY too much for what amounts to a toy camera. Imagine my shock this morning, when I checked on it (item number 7543378047) and found that I was outbid. 😕

I did some further searching on Eb** and found that this same person has bid on all the Agfa Clicks and most of the similar Isolas. I'm guessing that either these cameras produce negatives that are so magnificent that everyone who sees them cries at their utterly fabulous magnificence or this person has a really perverse variant of GAS that compels them to ignore untold numbers of Zeiss Ikontas and Rolleiflexes and empty their bank accounts on Agfa Clicks and Isolas. 😀 😀

I think that I will wait for this person's GAS to burn out before I try to get one myself. 😛

Richie

 

[JoeFriday]

I bet somewhere there's a weird old married couple who don't talk much, but the husband's hobby is buying Agfas.. and the wife's hobby is selling them on ebay

 

[FrankS]

It's a maniacal plot to corner the Clik market!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

It's gotta be Bill M or wierdcollector... BUT IT'S NOT ME!

 

[Honu-Hugger]

It's a maniacal plot to corner the Clik market!

What are the Hunt brothers up to these days? 😉

 

[thmk]

It is possible to transform the Clacks into nice Pinhole cameras. Maybe this guys wants to run a business with it... or whatever.
BTW the pictures are indeed not that bad as the camera may imply.

 

[richiedcruz]

Check out the pictures at this site. The Clack will take great pictures. Definitely above toy level. Velvia 50 is said to work super in them.
I have both 6x6 and 6x9 Clack's.

http://www.klein-aber-fein.de/ralph/english/photos.htm

The pictures on this site are what inspired me to get a Clack 🙂

But the fact that people will drive up the prices on these simpler cameras always makes me smile. It is almost enough to make me want to buy one of the $20 Holgas that my local camera store keeps by the register. Then again, I would not be able to brag that I have both a Click and a Clack.

Greyhoundman, I don't suppose you could post some pics? What film do you use in them? And, much more importantly, can a Click be worth that much more than a Clack?

Richie

 

[Seele]

This rounding-up of Clacks at silly prices reminds me of something that happened some time in the 1980s...

All out of the blues, there was a sudden demand in Japan for early Vest Pocket Kodak cameras; the early model with trelliis struts, but only the ones with the basic doublet meniscus lenses. Prices shot up to silly levels, dealers in the UK at least (I was living there at the time) were all over the country rounding them up and shipped them out in large quantity.

As it turned out, a magazine article started all that. Someone in Japan found the remains of a VPK, so he tried to reuse the lens by putting it on a 35mm SLR, and found the soft-focus effect, when used without the front stop, quite appealing. After his article on this experiment appeared in a photographic magazine, a lot of people started looking for VPKs so as to repeat the process, and willing to pay top dollars to get one for breaking it up just to get the lens. While it is valid in a sense, that the dealers who shipped these cameras there were indeed making an honest living, the mass destruction of these cameras that followed does not really make them seen as helping to preserve historical artefacts; it also goes some way to show the lines of thinking among the public in general I suppose.

 

[lynn]

I have Clacks and Clicks and Isolas (one was "complimentary" with my first GSN: thanks Pherdinand!) and an Isoly...but I've never paid more than a few dollars each. There are a lot less offered for sale on Ebay than on local sites - one Dutch auction site has 20 Clacks listed, I just counted, and that's just with "Clack" in the title, there are many more listed as "old Agfa" or "antique (!) camera"(what does that make ME, I wonder?). One of my Clacks - in great condition - was a "if you come pick it up, it's yours" camera, so all it cost me was an hour in the bus.
Now if only 120 film weren't so expensive here....

 

[Roman]

There is a German guy on Ebay who sells Clicks & Clacks modified into pinhole cameras - maybe that's where he gets his supplies?


Roman

 

[wierdcollector]

Surprisingly enough, I do have two Clacks and one Isola but no Clicks.