Value of Leica IIIf today

Your friend is broadly right. Post-war foreign currency regulations and related import prohibitions made it impossible for amateur photographers in the UK to buy new cameras from other countries if the ex-factory price of the camera (that is, the price the importer or dealer paid, excluding freight charges) was more than a very low figure - from memory I think this was £5.

Only professional photographers, who could prove that they needed an expensive new camera for their work, could obtain an import licence to buy a Leica or Rolleiflex. This rule was the reason for the rise of the British camera industry during the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s, resulting in cameras like the Reid III (a virtual clone of a Leica IIIb), the Ilford Witness (which took Leica lenses), the Periflex (a reflex focusing camera that took Leica lenses) and the MPP Microcord and Microflex, respectively near clones of the Rolleicord and Rolleiflex of the time. Import restrictions were gradually relaxed in the late 1950s, so it became possible for amateurs to buy new cameras like the Retina IIc and IIIc, the Exakta Varex and the Rolleicord. They did not end until 1959/60.

After the Second World War, second-hand Leica prices were very high and few could afford them. In April 1946, RG Lewis advertised in Miniature Camera Magazine a Leica IIIa with f/2 Summar, then about ten years old, for £103 17s. This equates to about £2,650 today, which is a huge sum for a second-hand camera.

I have not been able to find a new price for a Leica IIIf for you in the time available, but to give you an idea, a new Leica M3 with f/2 Summicron was advertised by Wallace Heaton in October 1962 at just under £183. At that time, as an advertising copywriter aged 21, I was earning about £700 per year and was considered well paid, so you could approximate £183 then as being equivalent to about £5,000 today. The IIIf ten years earlier would probably have been in the same general area of price.

by Ivor Matanle