I recently purchased a used lens and I was curious as to the date of Manufacture. How could I find out this information?

-- Jerry Ammons (lytton@hotmail.com), January 01, 2002

Answers

Not an exact science. Leica tends to "allocate" a range of serial numbers to lenses of a particular year, then they may use them that year, or use them the following year.

The Leica Collector's Guide (Dennis Laney, Hove Publ) has tables of approx serial number years. If you post the lens serial number I'll look it up for you.

-- Ken Shipman (kennyshipman@aol.com), January 01, 2002.

Everything Ken said is true, and especially Leica's S/Ns are an exception to the rule.

Also check out the book "Identifying Leica Lenses" by Ghester Sartorius, 1999, ISBN 0-8174-4027-5.

The easiest source to get at is John Collier's hard work in "Question about Leica Serial Numbers":

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=005A 2h

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), January 02, 2002.