Vintage cameras to be auctioned off Saturday by Mt. Airy auction house

An impressive collection of old cameras will be put up for auction on Saturday, Nov. 19, at Fuller’s Fine Art Auctions at 730 Carpenter Lane in Mt. Airy.

More than 350 cameras, some from the late 1800s, can be bid on in person, by phone or online. The cameras were collected by Edward Kaprelian (1913-1997), who after World War II became an expert on camera and lens technology. In May 1945, the U.S. Army seized more than 2,000 Carl Zeiss lenses from Germany as “war reparations” and turned them over to Kaprelian, who was then serving as Chief of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Engineering Labs in Fort Monmouth, N.J. 

Kaprelian went on to become an avid collector of photographic equipment and materials during his lifetime and amassed a large collection of important cameras spanning the history of photography.

According to Fuller’s Auction House, this sale will include several U.S. Army cameras and a 1930s Japanese Army aerial camera, German-made robot cameras, 16 Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex cameras and several important sub-miniature cameras.

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Jeffrey Fuller, the owner of the auction house, says Kaprelian kept his ever-growing camera collection in a space near South Street. “On the weekends people knew that they could come and bring him cameras, because they knew he collected them,” said Fuller. 

Photos of all of the items are available online.

Doors will open on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 9 a.m. Live bidding will begin at 11 a.m.

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