| Subject: |
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Re: Polaroid camera collection |
| Name: |
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Michael Cleveland |
| Date Posted: |
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Apr 21, 08 - 11:14 PM |
| Email: |
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Luvantique@aol.com |
| Message: |
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Collecting Polaroids can be fun. I've collected quite a few over the years as part of a larger overall collection of photographica, and I appreciate nice collections. But while Polaroids are important to any collection of photographic history, with only a few exceptions they have little monetary value because they were made in mind-boggling numbers. It's a lot easier to buy a Polaroid than to sell one, and your Dad's collection may be difficult to sell because it has none of the scarcer models that would make a collection interesting to a buyer. Everything there is very common. The large number of common duplicates will make it even more difficult to sell as a lot because the buyer would be paying a substantial amount for a large number of extra cameras that will be difficult or impossible to resell. How to sell them is a quandary. As a rule, I don't recommend selling whole collections at once for a variety of reasons, but if you sell them one at a time, you will find many of the models to be unsellable. Sorry, don't mean to put a damper on enthusiasm, but there were enough Polaroids manufactured to satisfy all of the current collectors and potential new collectors for the next 150 years without making a dent in the supply. For the record, the notable exceptions include the rollfilm 100 (if it exists; it's different from the extremely common filmpack 100, but I've never encountered or heard of a collector who's ever seen one), the 110 series, 120, 180 series, and 190 series. The Model 700 is described by some sources as common, but it's actually quite scarce and I think a sleeper. The SX-70 is common, but it has retained a surprising amount of value as a user. There are other more esoteric cameras like the oscilloscope cameras and ID cameras, but those get a mixed reception from all but extremely serious Polaroid collectors. I guess the bottom line is that Polaroid collecting can be an interesting and entertaining pastime, but it's not the place to invest for the sake of investment. |
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