Or: My adventures as a camera-auction bottom feeder
Oh, eBay.
Anyone interested in vintage photo gear will get sucked in eventually.
I admit, eBay has some very frustrating aspects. The sellers who stubbornly cling to inflated asking prices, ones which are sheer fantasy in 2015. Others with terrible blurry pictures and illiterate descriptions—witness the many listings for a lense, len, leans, lendes, len’s, or lends (search if you don’t believe me).
But you can also find odd bits of gear with novel and inspiring imagemaking potential, at a laughably low cost. Do you actually need a Yashica Dental Eye II? Probably not; but there is some price low enough where finally you say, “what the heck—I’m curious enough to pay that.”
Skim a day’s closing auctions and you may be surprised what slips by with few or no bids. If an item piques your interest, next search “sold listings” to see how low its price can actually go (but always watch out for padded shipping charges). I’m a very lowball bidder—content to lose most of the auctions I follow. But that patience has scored me some very fun items, at prices lower than what you’d spend on dinner and a beer. Some recent examples follow.