Jan

World’s Oldest and Most Expensive Camera Hits the Auction Block

Daguerreotype cameras are the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers of the devices we use for snapshots today. Recently the earliest—and with an expected price of 700,000 euro, the most expensive—examples of such a camera was rediscovered in a private collection.

If you’ve got between 200,000 euro, the auction’s starting price, and 700,000 euro, the expected final price, and a weakness for old, wooden sliding-box cameras then this one’s for you. It’s got the signature of its name sake, Jacques Mande Daguerre, and was actually built by his brother-in-law.

This is a neat piece of shutterbug history and I truly hope that it ends up in a museum collection where it can be viewed by the public rather than disappearing into another private basement museum. [Slashgear]