Amateur Photographer Magazine

Leica M9 give-away token forgotten

Saturday 10th October 2009

AP News Desk

Readers hoping to collect token 2 in the Amateur Photographer 125 anniversary special Leica M9 competition will not find it printed in the latest issue of the magazine as had been expected. Perhaps demonstrating the well established link between old age and forgetfulness, the UK's best selling weekly photography title, which celebrated its 125th birthday just last week, completely forgot to publish the promised token in the 17th October issue.

'This is more than a little embarrassing, as this is one of the biggest and most important promotions in the history of the magazine.' commented AP editor Damien Demolder. 'The chance to win a Leica M9 is amazing in itself, but a model inscribed by Leica, with finishes chosen by AP, make it a unique and priceless item. We must apologise to all our readers, and to Leica, for this terrible oversight.'

All is not lost, however, as readers purchasing the 17th October issue hoping to find the token can instead cut out the poll pie-chart from p3 of the magazine and attach that to the coupon. In addition AP will print both token 2 and token 3 in the issue dated 24th October 2009.

Marketing manager Estelle Hicks-Bennett tells us that this way no one should miss out or buy a magazine and not be able to add to their token-collect coupon. 'So long as readers attach the poll pie chart, that proves they have that issue of the magazine, we will accept that coupon. Those who would prefer not to cut-up that issue can wait for the issue that will be on sale in stores on Tuesday 20th October and collect tokens 2 and 3 at the same time.'

The competition centres around the chance to win a Leica M9, with Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron-M Asph lens, that has been especially engraved on the top plate by Leica to mark the 125th anniversary of Amateur Photographer magazine. Standard production models of the camera and lens combination would be worth over £6700, but it is said that the collectability of this one-off model makes it worth far more.

Details of how to enter the competition can be found in our news section, and details of the Leica M9 18 million pixel full frame rangefinder can be found on the Leica Camera website.

'I'd like to be able to blame someone for this,' said Editor Demolder, 'but it really was a team effort – and as leader of that team, and as someone that sees every single page before it is sent to print, I have to take ultimate responsibility. I suppose with the extra activities around the 125 celebrations we rather took our collective eye off the ball. We're not as young as we used to be, you know!'

The combined age of the AP team is 738.

Read our Leica M9 review in the 24th October issue - on sale Tuesday 20th October.

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