Endurism Spotlight: Leica M6

Buy a used Leica M6 for €3.500 today. Sell it in ten years for close to the same figure. The camera will have cost you next to nothing to own.

The money

Most cameras are liabilities. A normal mirrorless body costs around €800 new. In ten years it is worth maybe €250. The rest is gone, lost to shutter wear and newer sensors. The M6 behaves differently. Its price has climbed for years on the used market. Leica froze the design decades ago, so nothing about it dates.

Every camera brand needs you to upgrade. That churn is the tax. Step off it once and the money stays with you.

A film Leica needs a service roughly every ten years. Budget €400 and carry that cost on the Leica's own side of the ledger. The numbers still invert.

The €3.500 camera cost you less to own than the €800 one. You also still hold the €3.500.

The object

The M6 is a 35mm rangefinder that Leica first built in 1984. The top plate and baseplate are solid brass under black lacquer. The meter is the only electronic part. Everything else is gears and springs a technician can service for another forty years. Leica reissued it new in 2022 for around €6.000. The classic bodies trade between €3.000 and €4.000.

Leica still services these bodies. A rangefinder can be recalibrated, a shutter retimed, the covering replaced. That is why a forty-year-old M6 still works and still sells. Digital cameras die when the sensor and firmware age out. A mechanical Leica has nothing to age out.

Ownership

This is the patina dividend. Quality goods amortise. Depreciation is for disposables. The brass wears through at the corners where your fingers sit. Collectors call it brassing and pay more for it. The camera you use hardest becomes the one worth the most. €3.500 in an M6 is money you can get back, parked in something you carry every day.

Verdict: the rare tool that costs less the longer you keep it.