Buy analog cameras on eBay

Why should you listen to me?

About 7 years ago, I founded Ausgeknipst. Back then I was alone, and instead of producing accessories and spare parts for analog cameras, I bought analog cameras, lenses, and accessories on eBay, checked them, repaired them in my shared apartment room, and (mostly) resold them at a profit.

By buying and selling analog cameras, I financed my second degree back then. The knowledge I have gathered over the last 7 years I want to pass on to you here. Even if you don’t plan to open a photo business but are just looking for a bargain, this guide should help you.

P.S. Nowadays, at Ausgeknipst we only sell self-made accessories for analog cameras. That means I can share my “secret knowledge“ here with you without any guilt ;)

Tip in advance: If you don’t know your way around, buy from a reputable dealer with a 30-day return policy

All analog cameras on the market are now over 30 years old, and in about half the cases, they are more or less defective. This means that many private individuals who own these cameras either have no or little knowledge about exactly what they are selling – for example, when selling an inheritance from grandpa. But even commercial dealers often reach their limits when it comes to reliably testing all functions.

There are several reasons for this: On the one hand, the necessary test equipment and specific know-how are lacking; on the other hand, a complete check as provided in the service booklet is simply no longer profitable. Disassembling, servicing, and cleaning an analog SLR camera usually takes a whole day. The cost for a capable analog camera precision mechanic (of whom there are hardly any left) can and will hardly be borne or wanted by any customer. This effort is therefore only worthwhile for high-priced professional cameras from Hasselblad, Leica, Alpa & Co.

An exception to this rule are individual specialist workshops that focus on a specific camera model. For a long time in Germany, there was the so-called “OM-Doctor” Frank Timmann, a specialist in repairing Olympus OM system cameras. And I myself once had my Kiev 88 medium format camera overhauled by Arax Foto in Ukraine, and it was affordable. These specialist workshops can work faster and more efficiently because they know the specific cameras very well. As far as I know, only the Finnish dealer Kamerastore.com manages this on a broad scale today. To my knowledge, this is the only professional dealer for analog cameras that employs its own mechanics for the repair and overhaul of analog cameras and continues to train them.

Conclusion: If you are not familiar with analog cameras, it is advisable to buy from a reputable dealer with a return policy. This way, you can ensure that in case of a defect, you won't be stuck with the costs and, ideally, receive a functioning camera.

Choosing the right camera

There are dozens of camera manufacturers and over 1000 different models with various types like easy-to-use point-and-shoot cameras, medium format cameras for professionals, large format cameras for photographers with artistic ambitions & much, much more. If you have no clue and just want to get a taste of the world of analog photography, I always recommend a 35 mm SLR camera for beginners. It is compact, universally usable, affordable, and in demand. That means if you realize in a few months that the hobby is not for you, you can also resell it well for the same price (especially if you followed this guide and got a good bargain).

The most popular 35 mm SLR cameras sorted by manufacturers are:

Canon AE-1, A-1, F-1, FTb, T50, T70

Minolta SRT-101, X-700

Nikon EM, F2, F3, FE, FM, FM2

Olympus OM-1, OM-2

Pentax K1000, ME Super, MX, Spotmatic

With these camera models, you can hardly go wrong. They are all relatively robust models that have stood the test of time and are also ones you can always resell well.

Determining the price of the camera

In most cases, for starting out, you first need the camera body (the housing) and a single lens. I recommend an original lens from the manufacturer with a focal length of 35 mm or 50 mm (so-called standard focal length). These lenses are optimal in terms of price/performance, bright (good for indoor shots with low light), easy to resell, and just like the 35 mm SLR camera itself, universally usable.

But generally, buying in a bundle is the cheapest way. Often you find bundles online consisting of several bodies, different lenses, and accessories like flash, motor winders, expired analog films, and more. If you dare to resell part of your equipment, this is the cheapest way to get your dream gear. At the beginning of my "career," I did exactly that. For example, if I wanted a Canon AE-1 with a 50 mm f/1.8 lens, I bought a bundle with a camera & 5 different lenses (including the 50 mm I actually wanted). I simply sold the other 4 lenses again and thus financed the purchase of the camera.

The Advanced Search on eBay

To determine the price of the camera or the lot or set, it’s best to use the “Advanced Search” on eBay and look for “Ended listings” and “Sold items”:

It’s best to only show offers from Germany (I advise against international purchases because it’s always good if you can return the camera if necessary).

Depending on whether you want to take a risk or play it safe, you can also search by seller type “Commercial” or “Private”:

Return periods for commercial and private sellers on eBay

Commercial sellers must grant you at least a 14-day return policy. This gives you enough time to unpack the camera and test it “dry.” To test, you need some technical skill and ideally some prior experience with analog cameras. If you have neither or both, it is better to buy from a dealer who offers a 30-day return period.

You can find the return conditions on the right under the auction title.

With a return period of 1 month, you have enough time to test the camera with a film & develop the film. Often, any defects only show after development. If the camera has a defect, you can simply send it back.

With a private seller, such a return is of course more difficult. You can talk to most sellers. If you tested the camera after purchase and it does not work, or the condition and function differ from the item description, then definitely contact the seller, whether private or commercial.

Most users on eBay are keen to maintain their good rating and are therefore cooperative. Even though private sellers are not required to take back the goods they sold (at least legally this is a gray area), in most cases you can negotiate a price reduction. In any case, it helps to start a return via the eBay return portal if there are problems. If the seller refuses, you can contact eBay support after a certain period and they will mostly decide in your favor (i.e. you get your money back), especially if the seller does not respond.

It should be noted: broken is not the same as broken. Most cameras you find online will have one or another major or minor defect. This is simply because they are so old. Often you can live with the faults. For example, a mechanical camera with a broken light meter can be wonderfully used further with an external light meter or a light meter app for your smartphone & you can fix defective light seals with our light seal kit simply replace yourself. It gets more difficult if the camera’s shutter is defective. Then you can usually only return the camera or use it as a paperweight.

Determine the purchase price of the camera: search for ended listings

I will explain to you below using a very concrete search example how I would proceed if I buy a “Functional Canon AE-1 with original Canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens.”

Example search price determination commercial: Canon AE-1 / Commercial seller from Germany, Buy It Now

If you have entered the search criteria (see above, e.g. commercial seller from Germany, Buy It Now), then you see that, for example, a used and functional Canon AE-1 with original 50mm f/1.8 lens costs between €150 - €190:

Analysis example search price determination commercial:

1. Canon AE-1 + 50 mm f/1.8 lens: exactly what we are looking for & then also from a seller with top service & very many (13,000) reviews. You can’t go wrong here, but the camera also achieved the highest selling price with this seller.
2. Canon AE-1 + 50 mm f/1.8 lens: this seller has much less experience and therefore cannot demand the same price. However, he has excellent ratings with an average of 98.8% and offers a return period as a commercial seller.
3. Canon AE-1 with no-name zoom lens: I can already see from the small preview photo that the third camera in the list was sold together with a cheaper zoom lens (which we don’t want)
4. Canon AE-1 without lens: the fourth camera was sold with the original packaging but completely without a lens.

So now I know that I have to pay between €150 - €190 for a (probably) functional Canon AE-1 with a 50 mm lens. Since dealers can usually estimate the prices of their goods quite well, you can usually only dream of real bargains here. Tip: commercial sellers often have the “Make Offer” feature enabled. Deduct about 10% from the actual purchase price and submit this as a “price offer.” Most dealers will gladly accept your offer.

Example search price determination private: Canon AE-1 / Private seller from Germany, Buy It Now

You want to make a real bargain? Then you have to take a risk and buy from private sellers without a warranty, then you can get much better prices. I am now setting the “Advanced Search” to ended listings from private sellers and get, for example, the following four results:

Example search analysis price determination private:

1. Canon AE-1 with 4 lenses + flash: one of the lenses is the 50 mm f/1.8 we’re looking for, the other three and the flash are a nice bonus that we might resell. The price for this set is the same as the second commercial offer above (for the same price we get more here, but without a return policy)
2. Canon AE-1 with original 35-105 mm f/3.5 lens: as an expert, I know that the black Canon AE-1 fetches slightly higher prices because it’s rarer, plus it was sold here with a somewhat more expensive lens. Overall, though, still not what we want.
3. Canon AE-1 with 35-70 mm 1:3.5-4.5 lens: the price is fair, but the lens doesn’t fit our search.
4. Canon AE-1 with 50 mm f/1.8 lens: exactly what we were looking for, from a private seller with 100% positive reviews. You could have snapped this up. We note the price of €100 for the set we wanted.

Find the right camera for Buy It Now

Next, we look for current Buy It Now offers from private sellers. I continue to search only for “Canon AE-1” & not for “Canon AE-1 50 mm” because many private sellers have no idea how to properly title the lens. If the searched keyword (e.g. 50 mm f/1.8) is not in the title but included in the offer (deduced from the product pictures), you usually pay less than usual. The reason is simple: if sellers describe the equipment well, they know their stuff and also know better what price they can ask for. This time I sort by “Lowest Price” first and get the following results:

Example search analysis private:

1. Canon AE-1: body only, no lens: not for us
2. not a camera at all, just a special back: not for us
3. Canon AE-1 with zoom lens: not for us
4. Canon AE-1 with lens: I click on the photos and see that in the fourth photo, the camera is sold in the set together with the lens we are looking for:

Check offer description, photos, and reviews

That means I could buy the set I’m looking for for €80 from a private seller who, however, has relatively few (12) reviews. Also, the 87.5% behind the seller’s name shows me that the seller has negative reviews. That calls for caution. Not every negative review is justified, but when in doubt, you should always read the negative reviews if you want to buy from a seller with negative reviews (especially if it’s a private seller without a return policy). Clicking on the review points shows me the following picture:

Especially the second review scares me off here because the seller apparently sold the same offer once before and then didn’t want to ship it. So we keep looking.

So I scroll further down and find the following offer for 85€:

On the right in the photo, I see the 50 mm f/1.8 lens I’m looking for. There is also a zoom lens. The price fits. The only downside is that the seller has only 3 reviews. In doubt, I check the reviews and the item description again:

The seller name “wilhol_0” suggests that the user did not choose the name themselves. Ebay often assigns usernames based on first and last names. So the seller could be Wilfried Hofmann or similar. Probably an older gentleman who wants to sell his old photo equipment and is not very active on the internet. The item description only says “Also includes a flash unit from Cullmann (30T-DS) and a shoulder bag.” In my experience, scammers don’t write like that. The three positive reviews also sound good. You could safely buy here and the price is fair.

If I want to push the price down further, I may have to be patient and keep an eye out for auction offers.

Win the right camera by auction (at the best price)

The motto here is: be patient, create a search order, and use Auction Sniper.

Not always, but mostly you can get better bargains with some patience by bidding in auctions than if you use the “Buy It Now” function.

Next, when I search for auction offers, I get the following list:

Analysis example search auction from private seller:

1. Canon AE-1 with 50 mm lens from Makinon: not the desired original lens, but not bad for the price.
2. Canon AE-1 with 35-70 mm lens from Canon: not the desired 50 mm lens, but a good original zoom lens from Canon.
3. Canon AE-1 Program with two lenses: this is even a more expensive Canon AE-1 Program, unfortunately combined with relatively cheap Soligor lenses.
4. Canon AE-1 Program: here too, there is an AE-1 Program with a relatively good, because fast Sigma zoom lens.

Among the cheap auction offers today (19.12.24), there wasn't a single Canon AE-1 with a 50 mm f/1.8 lens. That means: if you want to snag a bargain, you have to be flexible. You won't find a suitable auction at every moment. If you want your camera as soon as possible, you have to compromise on the specific combinations of camera + lens + accessories, or you create a search order and be patient.

Also, you never really know the final price an auction will end at. Often, bidders get into a bidding rage in the last minutes of an auction and end up buying the items more expensively than they could have with the Buy It Now price. Of course, we want to avoid that in the best case.

Additional software for ambitious collectors and resellers

If you have some time and want to get a good bargain, I recommend using a so-called auction sniper tool, like the one from myibidder.com. There you can log in with your eBay account and set a maximum bid for the auction you selected. This bid will then be placed in the last 8 seconds of the auction. It’s important that you enter your honest (meaning: be honest with yourself) maximum bid here. No more and no less. This way, you avoid both getting caught in a bidding war with another bidder and regretting afterward because someone else got the camera for a price you could and would have paid.

The use of such tools is sometimes controversial but tolerated by eBay. If you want to be on the safe side, your only option is to set an alarm and place your bid shortly before the auction ends.

If you want to professionalize your eBay game even further, I recommend using another tool: Auctionsieve.

With Auctionsieve, you can save searches (called Sieves here) just like on eBay, but with the big advantage that you:

1. You can save catch words: these are search terms that get pushed to the top in the search (in our case, this could be the designation for the lens you’re looking for: “50 mm f/1.8” or similar).
2. You can save trash words: these are search terms that are directly hidden from your results (for example, you can directly hide cheap lenses from “Sigma,” “Tamron,” and co.).
3. Already seen items are hidden: The most important feature of Auctionsieve is the option “Hide Items shown before.” With this, you can hide everything you have already seen. That might not sound like much at first, but it’s essential if you search weekly or daily for all kinds of cameras and then only have to sift through 100 instead of 10,000 search results.

What should you pay attention to from a technical perspective?

Analog cameras are technically highly complex, and even after 7 years of experience with hundreds or thousands of different cameras, I often still have trouble determining the exact technical condition of a camera. This becomes naturally even harder, if not impossible, when you only have shaky, blurry, and dark pictures of the camera (like you will often have when searching for cheap deals on eBay).

Of course, we want to maximize our chances of buying a good and intact camera, so we try to extract all information from the item description:

1. The seller’s reliability: I already described above how I roughly assess a seller’s reliability. Look at the number of reviews and especially the negative and neutral ones, read the description (if there’s nothing there, it’s often just laziness and not necessarily a bad omen). Ideally, someone has put a lot of effort in and checked as much as possible themselves. Pro tip: never buy anything that comes from a basement. Basements are often damp, and moisture destroys every camera.
2. Look at the pictures very carefully:

1. Watch out for cloudiness or fungus in the glass of the lenses and the viewfinder
2. Look at photos of the open back and check if the light seals are intact (usually they are not, but you can replace them yourself quite easily; we sell a light seal set for this)
3. Watch out for missing or broken covers and battery doors
4. Check if the camera looks clean and is free of major scratches and dents (this is usually a sign that it was handled or stored carefully)

3. If you can see the camera on site, you can of course assess the condition much better. For example, you can insert a battery and check if the light meter still works, operate the film advance, look through the back and see if the shutter opens and closes. Operate the aperture ring and check if the aperture closes reliably or is oily, etc.

Most of the time, you won’t have the chance to check the camera on site. And even if you do, such a technical inspection is difficult for a layperson. So all you have is a good look at the seller, the description, the photos, a bit of luck, and as a last resort, of course, the return of the defective camera.

Conclusion: if you want to play it safe, buy from a trusted source

In the end, you have to decide for yourself whether you want to take a gamble and buy a camera cheaply from a private seller, which might arrive broken. Or whether you want to play it safe and buy from a reputable seller with good reviews and a 30-day return policy.

I hope this buying guide has helped you and that you find your dream camera with its help. If so, you can support us by purchasing the appropriate accessories (like a battery or any covers) from our shop. If you have any further questions, feel free to leave us a comment or write to us on Instagram @ausgeknipst.de

Best regards!

Your Vladi @ausgeknipst