Several rare Cold War-era spy camera are among the lots to appear at the 46th Leitz Photographica Auction in Germany this June.
The cameras include a KGB spy camera that shoots through the lock of a briefcase, a Soviet miniature camera based on the famous Minox used in various James Bond films, and an ingenious Czech-made camera which takes pictures through an adapted document folder.
The briefcase camera features a modified Soviet Zorki-6 rangefinder attached to a special plate and featuring an adapted Orion-15 28mm lens with fixed focus.
Leitz Photographica says the covert camera includes an “ingenious system allowing to crank and release the shutter by squeezing the case” thus avoiding movements that might raise suspicion. This camera is expected to sell for between €1,400 and €1,600.
The Meopta Oko II/TI-340 Spy Camera is a Czech-made 16mm spy camera adapted to shoot through a fake document folder. The motorised camera features a Robot-mount Xenon 2/35mm lens and is able to shoot up to 70 shots in its special cassettes.
“Expertly engineered for silent operation, the camera is exceptionally well-built and discreet,” Leitz Photographica said, and is one of only a handful thought to have survived the Cold War. This camera is expected to sell for between €1,200 and €1,400.
Another camera featured in the sale is a Krasnogorsk Tochka S-252, a Soviet miniature camera based on the famous Minox cameras. The camera uses 9.5mm film and Leitz Photographica said is virtually silent despite its motor-driven operation. The camera is in mint and working condition, and is expected to sell for between €2,400 and €2,800.
The Eastern Bloc spy cameras also include an intriguing KGB pinhole camera, built for 8mm film and with four separate lenses.
The camera expected to achieve the highest price, however, is a rare brass and chrome miniature camera built for East Germany’s formidable intelligence services, the Stasi.
Leitz Photographic said the camera is a previously unknown model, shooting 9x9mm square-format images and measures only 3cm by 1.5cm. This camera is expected to sell for between €6,000 and €8,000.
The spy camera haul joins hundreds of other cameras at the sale in Wetzlar, in Germany, on 27 June.
Other cameras to appear include a Leica 0-Serie camera – No. 112. It is one of only 22 pre-series cameras made as test models for the first production camera, the Leica I, which first appeared in 1925.
This camera, Leitz Photographica predict, could sell for as much as €2m.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
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