Locating Long Lost Leicas by the numbers...
The Leitz Delivery Register is awesome, but it can’t do everything.
Shortly after the comprehensive article “Leica Serial Numbers: The Holy Grail of Camera Identification” (LHSA, August 31, 2020) was posted, we received an impassioned plea from Kathlene Fairchild seeking our help in recovering her daughter’s stolen Leica (see her original letter and our reply below). This camera, an irreplaceable family heirloom, was used by her photojournalist great grandfather “during a war,” presumably World War II, since the first Leica I (Model A) wasn’t officially announced until 7 years after the Armistice was signed in 1918. Regrettably, the one piece of critical information Ms. Fairchild lacked was the serial number of the missing camera, and that’s why she offered to “look up the handwritten names” to find it. Well, even if Leica allowed people to pore through their original ledger books on request (they don’t—they’re kept under lock and key in a temperature/humidity-controlled room) it wouldn’t have been much help, either in determining the missing Leica’s serial number or in recovering the purloined camera itself.
The letter:
“I don’t know if you can help but I’m desperate! My daughter’s inheritance was a Leica camera used by her great grandfather during a war. He was a photojournalist. Her camera was stolen at the beginning of this year. I’m willing to look up handwritten names to find the serial number. I still have the view finder on hand. This is very important to me. Please help if at all possible.”—Kathlene Fairchild
Our reply:
Regrettably, there’s no way to do an owner’s name search to determine the model and serial number of your daughter’s stolen Leica even if her photojournalist great grandfather was the original owner, and having the accessory viewfinder alone is inconclusive. The handwritten sales records maintained by Leica are organized by serial number and generally indicate only the store, dealer or other entity that received the camera from E. Leitz Wetzlar and the date it was shipped from the factory. In short, you would have to have the serial number to determine which model Leica it was, and when it was shipped to the seller.
If you have a photo of the person in question holding the camera it would helpful in identifying the model, but it’s highly unlikely that you’d be able to read the serial number unless it included a close-up of the top of the camera. Unfortunately, even if you had the model and serial number of the Leica it would be of limited value in recovering the camera–the percentage of people who get their cameras back after sending detailed stolen camera notices to the police, auction sites, etc., is very small indeed. Sadly, the best we can offer you is our sympathy.
Courtesy of Jim Lager
The Leitz Ledger
To give you a precise idea of what the Leitz Delivery Ledger looks like we contacted noted Leica expert James Lager who kindly sent us the image of a page taken from ledger book #26, dated February 1946. “These are Leica IIIc's going to the U.S. Army through the A.E.S. (Army Exchange Service, essentially the PX). The date of completion (left-hand column) is stamped whereas the shipment date (Datum der Lieferung) is handwritten. You can see the camera number, the customer, the date, the shipment/order number, and a column left blank to indicate if the camera comes back (zurück). The Occupation Forces got nearly all of the Leicas between serial numbers 392001-397650 and few, if any were ever sent back to Germany. The 5-letter LOOPN code means with 5cm f/3.5 Elmar; LOOKX denotes cameras fitted with the 5cm f/2 Summitar.” Note that the stamped number in the upper left-hand corner (395151) is the serial number of the first camera on the page, which lists a total of 50 cameras in numerical sequence. In other words, the camera listed on the second line is serial number 395152. Leitz used these handwritten ledgers well into the 1960s before transferring to the computerized records that are still in use today.
