Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 02:11 PM 9/10/01 -0500, Jeffery Smith wrote: >In San Diego, the Commissary seemed to deal in one brand name to the >exclusion of others, and the brand names seemed to change from time to >time. So, if you wanted a tape recorder, it as Akai. If you wanted a >receiver, it was Sansui. I don't know of anyone buying a Leica there, >but I know they had the Mamiya 500TL and the Yashica D. I know of >someone getting a Petri there too. Most of the cameras were more >"consumer" level than pro level. Jeffery The deal about Leica in the PX (NOT the Commissary: that's where you buy food, while the Class Six Store is where you buy your Lagavulin) was in the late 1940's and early 1950's in Europe and never extended to CONUS. When the US PX system was being set up in Europe in 1945, Leitz and Franke & Heidecke were the only camera companies available to supply the system so they received exclusive contracts for about a decade. This gave both companies a huge boost in sales and ready income at a time when Zeiss Ikon and Ihagee were both struggling most mightily. By 1960, this preference was gone and the Leica and Rolleiflex cameras were priced out of the PX system. By the 1980's, PX's were a great source for the swathe of amateur Canon and Nikon gear but even that is gone today; the water-down PX's now only sell bottom-end digital cameras and single-use jobbies, along with loud and cheap clothing and pasteboard furniture. The PX's in the Orient picked up Nikon and Canon gear when the ETO got Leicas and Rolleiflexes. Again, by about 1960, the better stuff had been replaced by cheaper cameras. (The USAF and US Army have a consolidated "Army/Air Force Exchange System" or AAFES, while the US Navy has a separate system of Base Exchanges quite similar in nature.) Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!