Found an old camera

I was at an estate sale last July (2012) and they had a box full of art supplies that I bought for $10. Huge box...brought it home with plans to go thru it and never did. It found its way into the back of closet. I started some early spring cleaning today and pulled the box out, and started going thru it. At the very bottom of the box a found this small suede, zippered pouch and when I opened it up, there was an old Kodak camera in there. Thought is was pretty cool. Anyone know anything about it?

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Kodak_Retina

Obvious place to start would have ben Google.
Typing "Kodak Retina" into it found this...
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Kodak_Retina

Edit...appears I was a bit slow.

It's got the new Retina display with four times as many pixels as the Brownie.

philwillmedia wrote in post #15728589
Obvious place to start would have ben Google.
Typing "Kodak Retina" into it found this...

Yup...

nathancarter wrote in post #15729077
It's got the new Retina display with four times as many pixels as the Brownie.

Win.

Just so I don't seem dumb...I did Google it. I was just hoping someone had more of an insight than wikipedia lol. I wonder if it works...

Then perhaps being a little more specific with your original question may have helped.

Anyhoo...check out apug.org ...the fine folks on there will tell you more about any film camera than you'd ever want to know! Great group of shooters on that site!

I wouldn't be trying to use it or test it, because sometimes you can break a very old camera that way. It may or may not fetch a good price as a collectible - put it on eBay just as it is and let the buyer worry about it.

My father traded a later model Retina with the much more desirable Schneider lens for a Minolta SRT-101 because he wanted multicoating and a built-in meter in order to shoot colour. That was around 1972. It is 2013. Don't waste good film on it.

melcat wrote in post #15731063
Don't waste good film on it.

right, but it's a cool looking little camera

The camera shown in the OP appears to be a Retina 126, made from 1936 to 1937. Check out this web page. Click on the link to "folding Retinas" and then click on the "Retina" name just to the right of the 126 which is in the Type column. You'll see this picture which seems to be identical to the OP's camera.

A really interesting thing is that the Retina 126 appears to be part of the Retina I family, some of which were made at the same time as the 126 but with different features.

Here are a couple more interesting pages about the Retina I 126: RetinaRescue.com and Kodak Classics.

By the way, I found an ebay page with an offer of $999 for a Retina 126.

Got a link to that $999 Retina?

Kodaks are weird little things...in general they're worth waaaaay less than people would think because they were made in MASSIVE numbers...however, the odd one slips through and is worth more than others...I had a Signet rangefinder I sold for half-decent money (around 50 bucks I picked up at a flea market)...but some of the Brownies, for example, are barely worth their weight in plastic.

Don't get to excited about that $999 Retina it not going to happen. If you check the Retina's on
E-Bay you will see very few have been bid on. I did at one time have a Retina IIIC one heck of a nice
camera. If your into film I did see some nice ones on E-Bay in the $200 range really a nice user
collectable very well made.

LowriderS10 wrote in post #15731307
Got a link to that $999 Retina?

Here it is. That one looks immaculate and the one in the OP doesn't look like it's in any worse condition.

SkipD wrote in post #15732054
Here it is. That one looks immaculate and the one in the OP doesn't look like it's in any worse condition.

The asking price is $999. The offer amount isn't disclosed, but it's safe to assume that it was far south of the ask. The highest recent sale price was $75, for a unit that had had a recent CLA. I wouldn't expect the OP's camera to be worth more than that, even if it's in perfect working order.

If anyone in Melbourne wants to see one of these for real, Michael's currently have one, as well as several other folding Retinas, on display in their 1st floor museum. According to their caption, the cold shoe, which their 1937 example doesn't have, was an optional extra which the owner had to screw on themselves.