Dirtiest Leica Ever

Image by Bobby Abrahamson – bobbyabrahamson.com

Bobby Abrahamson, a friend of LHSA board member, Brad Husick, shared the following photo and email regarding a Leica camera he purchased years ago and recently had cleaned. Below is the email and response from the repair technician at D.A.G.:

“I just got my Leica M3 back from camera repair, and included on the invoice was the following message from repairman Don Goldberg: ‘I’ve been repairing Leica M cameras since my training at Leitz in Wetzlar, Germany from 1975, and I think this camera was the dirtiest Leica M camera that I’ve ever seen and I’ve repaired well over 10,000 Leica M cameras.’ 

“According to the serial number the camera was manufactured in 1957. I bought it in 1999, and never did a single repair or cleaning for the past 19 years until it finally stopped working on the flight back from Hawaii three weeks ago. Maybe it was never repaired or cleaned before either?!  Anyway, that’s pretty cool, to have the dirtiest camera out of 10,000 cameras he’s ever repaired! A badge of honor (or shame?)!!”

Thank you for sharing this story Bobby!