Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/06/05

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To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: Mini II numbers
From: David Young <youngs@IslandNet.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 96 17:05 PDT

At 11:34 PM 05/06/96 +0200, you wrote:
>Hello Reinhard,
>Yes, you are correct! I just examined my wife´s Mini II, and it has the same
>type of serial number on the bottom plate as M and R-cameras. So, Leica has
>mixed up all their cameras types!
>
>Best regards, Hans
>
>
Sorry, but the serial numbers are not mixed up. According to the "Leica
Pocket Book",  Leica serial numbers started at #100 in 1923, and have run
consecutively since.  New models do not start at 1 again.  Instead,
production runs for various models are allocated blocks of serial numbers.
When enough cameras are produced to use up all the allocated numbers,
another block is allocated.  This way, cameras with consecutive serial
numbers are often completely different models.  This also applies to cameras
manufactured in Portugal, Canada and Japan.

For instance #1648750 was an R4s made in 1984, while 1648751 was M-2 made in
1985).  But #1649521 was an M4P made in 1984 despite the higher serial number!

For interest, the smallest allocation block I've spotted is #1273922-25 for
post camera (I'm unsure the basic model of which this is a variant) with a
24x27mm frame.  Production run of 3!

Hope this helps.


-----------
David Young: youngs@IslandNet.com

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