Too old but very expensive camera in the world

Called “Daguerreotype,” it is a wooden sliding box camera produced by the Paris company Susse Freres in 1839.


Discovered as part of an inheritance in Germany, the antique piece will allow photography enthusiasts rewrite history. Westlicht, a private photo gallery and auction house in Vienna, plans to auction off this piece of history on May 26. Believed to be the world’s oldest commercially manufactured camera, Westlicht said the Vienna camera has never been restored.

The camera belongs to a US-based scholar and was inherited from his father, a technical photography professor at Munich University. The starting bid is $132,000, but the final price for the 168-year-old gadget is expected to be way past a million euros ($1,329,000).