FAQ

 
What’s go­ing on here?

»My Min­olta Mu­seum« has been es­tab­lished to present a per­son­al col­lec­tion of Min­olta SLR gear. I bought my very first cam­era, a Min­olta XG‑9, back in 1980, and I sticked to that brand ever since un­til I switched over to di­git­al im­age tak­ing more than 25 years later. This site is in­ten­ded to be a visu­al show­case of my treas­ured cam­er­as and lenses which still im­press me due to their ver­sat­il­ity and the fine work­man­ship in­volved.

 
Did/do you ac­tu­ally use all these cam­er­as and stuff?

Well, no. I sold my XG‑9 when the Dyn­ax (aka Maxxum) fam­ily of auto­fo­cus cam­er­as entered the mar­ket and I ob­tained a Dyn­ax 7000i in 1989 which was my com­pan­ion for many years. Later, I up­graded to the 600si clas­sic which was my ideal of a mod­ern cam­era with tra­di­tion­al con­trols. These two cam­er­as are still in my pos­ses­sion and the only ones that I used my­self for more than a hand­ful of film rolls. I bought all the oth­ers on oc­ca­sion for my little col­lec­tion be­cause I liked their design and their im­port­ant role in the Min­olta product his­tory. Yes, I am a col­lect­or and I’m happy to be the private cur­at­or of sev­er­al tiny per­son­al mu­seums. This is a con­ta­gious dis­ease, how­ever, so don’t read on if you don’t like to be temp­ted to buy ob­sol­ete stuff for a ri­dicu­lous amount of money... ;-)

 
Do you sell any of the vin­tage equip­ment shown here?

I might, but since I could­n’t stand the pro­spect of se­ing my be­loved col­lec­tion be­ing ripped apart, I have de­cided to sell »My Min­olta Mu­seum« only in one lot, bat­ter­ies and all ac­cessor­ies in­cluded. Of­fers for single items won’t be ac­cep­ted or even answered. Thank you for your un­der­stand­ing.

 
Phew, that’s a highly un­usu­al ap­proach. How come?

I still like to see my Min­olta gear around, even if it is no longer in act­ive use and only pleas­ing to the eye of the mel­an­chol­ic­al col­lect­or. Fur­ther­more, I don’t really need both the money and the shelf space. So all or noth­ing is what I have to sell.

 
OK, what are you ask­ing for all of the stuff to­geth­er?

EUR 3.750 / USD 4,500. That’s faaaaaar less than what I payed my­self...

Ad­dendum: I’m con­sid­er­ing to split and sell the col­lec­tion in two sep­ar­ate lots:

EUR 1.750 / USD 2,100 for the manu­al fo­cus (MF) gear
(7 bod­ies, 18 lenses, con­vert­er, Close-Up-Rings, books & ac­cessor­ies)

EUR 2.000 / USD 2,400 for the auto fo­cus (AF) stuff
(3 bod­ies, 8 lenses, books & ac­cessor­ies)

 
You’re kid­ding, aren’t you?

No.

 
What ex­actly would be in­cluded in the deal?

You’ll get everything shown in my product pho­to­graph­ies and everything lis­ted in the tables on the cam­era body pages, i.e. all ac­cessor­ies, manu­als, ori­gin­al boxes and pack­aging ma­ter­i­al as men­tioned. Most of the boxes lis­ted are stored safely in the at­tic and I did­n’t both­er to dig for them in or­der to make pho­tos. You’ll also get a sur­prise pack­age con­sist­ing of a lot of items that I did­n’t care to list (like a sturdy cam­era bag, bat­ter­ies, cable re­leas­ers, sys­tem books, ori­gin­al leaf­lets and bro­chures etc.).

 
Upon scru­pu­lous ex­am­in­a­tion of your pic­tures, I found out that some lens caps or oth­er smal­ler ac­cess­ory parts are ac­tu­ally miss­ing?

No, you only found out that I was not care­ful enough some­times when ar­ran­ging the items on the table for tak­ing pho­tos of them. Later on, I real­ized all (?) of my mis­takes my­self, but I was ad­mit­tedly too lazy to get through all the pre­par­a­tion work again in or­der to make new pic­tures...

 
In what con­di­tion are the items?

All of my pho­to­graph­ic gear shows very little (if any) signs of use and I’m test­ing all mech­an­ic­al func­tions (film trans­port, shut­ter, aper­ture ring etc.) at least once a year to pre­vent stor­age dam­age due to lack of use. There are no scratches on glass sur­faces and there is no oil on the aper­ture blades and no fungus on the glass lenses. Fur­ther­more, I do not smoke and there aren’t any cats or dogs in my house­hold... ;-)

 
I guess that pack­ing & post­age go ex­tra?

Not ne­ces­sar­ily. I will de­liv­er per­son­ally (and at no ex­tra cost) with­in Cent­ral Europe (i.e. in Ger­many and its ad­ja­cent coun­tries). Over­seas cus­tom­ers (based in Amer­ica, Asia, Australia/New Zea­l­and) are in­vited to pro­pose a se­cure meth­od of pay­ment and de­liv­ery.

 
You are defin­i­ti­fely not jok­ing?

No. Why should I?

 
I might be in­ter­ested in ob­tain­ing your com­plete col­lec­tion, but I still have sev­er­al ques­tions that I don’t find answered here?

Great! Just drop me a note at ralph@my-minolta-museum.info; I will reply as soon as pos­sible and to the best of my know­ledge.

 
With what brand and type of cam­era are you tak­ing pho­togaphs nowadays?

Since 2006, I use Can­on com­pact cam­er­as (shame on me), mainly for il­lus­trat­ing the posts pub­lished in my per­son­al blog. I really got tired of car­ry­ing around bulky hard­ware...

 
May I ask you some ques­tions about oth­er vin­tage Min­olta gear (tech­nic­al de­tails, pro­duc­tion date, prices etc.)?

Of course you may, but chances are that you won’t get an an­swer at all: I am neither a spe­cial­ist nor a pro­fes­sion­al, I don’t do any re­searches and I won’t es­tim­ate the worth of the vin­tage cam­era col­lec­tion some­body in­her­ited from his fath­er. Sorry to be ex­pli­cit, but there are quite a few ded­ic­ated for­ums out there where you may post re­quests like these!