Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/02/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My vote for Leica's Heyday was in the late 50's and early 60's with the M2 and M3 on into the M4. The big buyers were not Press photographers, but American GIs and young Louies with money to spend. Every Post Exchange and BX had a nice camera counter with a full stock of Leica, and several other nice cameras. In 1959, we moved from Wetzlar to Rhein Main which was the transit base back to the US (next to Flughafen Frankfurt). The BX counter there looked like a Leica store. It seemed like it always had guys lined up to buy cameras to take home, and they all liked those chrome snake neck straps for some reason. The WAC Circle PX in Frankfurt was pretty much the same, but had a wider array of cameras as it didn't cater to the guys on the way out of Germany. Obviously there were no taxes on anything, and the sales were subsidized in other ways I'm sure, so the cameras were great bargains compared to buying in German stores. One thing is they did not sell any darkroom gear or chemistry, so when I set up my darkroom, I had to go to a German store to buy all that stuff. Regards, Sonny http://sonc.com/look/ Natchitoches, Louisiana 1714 Oldest Permanent Settlement in the Louisiana Purchase USA