€312,000 for No.700004

At this year's WestLicht camera auction, the Leica M3 with serial number 700004 caused the biggest waves: the fourth serially produced M model was sold for €312,000 – achieving five or six times its estimated value of €50,000–60,000. No such luck for the rare Leica 72 (€24,000) and the prototype of the Doryu 1 pistol camera (€72,000), both of which were auctioned for less than their estimated values.

Photo Auction
As expected, the highest bid was achieved by a batch of 56 large-format prints from the series The Last Sitting by Bert Stern, comprising some of the last photographs of Marilyn Monroe. The collection was acquired for €120,000. The most expensive single image was Henri Cartier-Bresson's Last Days of Kuomintang, a signed gelatin silver print from the nineties which sold for €22,800.

Several prints were purchased for well below their estimated value, among them Man Ray's portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli (estimated at €8,000–10,000, sold for €5,400) and a set of Polaroids by Nobuyoshi Araki (estimated at €5,000–6,000, sold for €3,600). In contrast to previous auctions, a number of this year's items remained unsold.

For details visit WestLicht