[GateCityRadio]

I always buy used photography equipment. I always wonder what the previous owners took pictures of...basically what life events the camera has witnessed. My K1000 was my dads camera. It witnessed my entire family growing up, first days of school, birthdays etc etc. I just sold a K3 that was there when my son was born. It captured his first minutes of life. The sentimental part of me had a hard time listing it for sale but I know its the pictures that are the most important things. But I still wonder what some of the used equipment I've bought has seen before I've owned it. Do any of you wonder?

[MarkJerling]

I always buy used photography equipment. I always wonder what the previous owners took pictures of...basically what life events the camera has witnessed. My K1000 was my dads camera. It witnessed my entire family growing up, first days of school, birthdays etc etc. I just sold a K3 that was there when my son was born. It captured his first minutes of life. The sentimental part of me had a hard time listing it for sale but I know its the pictures that are the most important things. But I still wonder what some of the used equipment I've bought has seen before I've owned it. Do any of you wonder?

Yeah! I do that too. Not just with cameras. I wonder about the cars filled with my '53 Shell bowser. Or the parties had around my '35, '36 and '38 HMV radiograms. Or the family/families getting on with life around my '38 General Electric fridge. Or the picnics around my '50's Pepsi cooler.

[GateCityRadio]

Yeah! I do that too. Not just with cameras. I wonder about the cars filled with my '53 Shell bowser. Or the parties had around my '35, '36 and '38 HMV radiograms. Or the family/families getting on with life around my '38 General Electric fridge. Or the picnics around my '50's Pepsi cooler.

Yeah that makes me think about another thing, Cars. Like up until recently I could only afford older used cars. Like how many babies came home from the hospital or how many people went on first dates in those cars. You know like major life events. Its really interesting to think about.

[BigMackCam]

Some years ago I owned a beautiful 1967 Hillman Minx in remarkable condition, that'd belonged to the late father of the chap I bought it from. It had 93,000 miles on the clock, all from that one owner.

The car came with a trunk full of brand new spares, but more interestingly a stack of notebooks that the owner had maintained - logs of petrol consumption, his own servicing (the car had *never* been serviced by a dealer) and the parts and consumables used, letters back and forth to the manufacturer, small upgrades to the mechanics and electrics, diaries of long trips taken in the car etc.

If I remember rightly there were about a dozen of these notebooks, and over the course of a few weeks I read through every one of them. I felt like I got to know the owner quite well, or at least certain aspects of him.

Owning and driving that car was a fascinating experience, knowing all of the history behind it

[MarkJerling]

Some years ago I owned a beautiful 1967 Hillman Minx in remarkable condition...

There's nothing quite like that nice "old car smell" As you know, I've always had a thing for old cars, specifically '57 Fords. (I've owned 3 - but none at the moment - sady!) Another smell I can smell even now is hot day, gum tree leaves, baked scrapyard vintage car interior. Dangerous job, removing car parts from a hot African scrapyard. Puffadders seem to like old cars almost as much as I do.

[Arjay Bee]

I think along these lines as well.
I have a couple of dream 'rides' that I will never be able to afford new so at some point in the future I will be buying a vehicle that is on the road right now - so I start wondering where that unmet, to be highly valued, new to me vehicle is right now and hope that the current owner is taking very good care of it prior to me acquiring it.

[Just1MoreDave]

My wife bought a Mazda Miata (MX5) that was only a year old. She started driving it to work and the owner of the shop next door told her she was the former owner. The shop owner bought herself a new car every year. This was on Kaua'i, not a very big island, so her car from the previous year was across the street.

I bought an MX Data with a Pentax-F 28mm f2.8 on eBay. There just was an MX Data in the marketplace but it's a pretty rare MX variation. The back has a small flash and a watch body. A small flag blocks a corner of the film, where the watch image is projected. The assembly on the back makes it tough to see through the viewfinder, though you could swap backs with a regular MX, turn the flag out of the frame and it was a normal camera again. Anyway, I wonder what it was used for. I sold it to a collector and kept the lens.

[reeftool]

One of the reasons I keep my beat up old SP1000 is that is recorded 3 decades of family photos, including the birth of one of my kids. It also still works as do my Takumar lenses. That gear holds a prominent place on my bookshelf.

I bought a used Honda motorcycle in the mid 80's for a very good price. It was among the used bikes at a local dealer and was selling for considerably less than others of that size and age. It had very low miles and a lot of obviously new parts. It did have some very bad scrapes on the stator cover on the side of the engine, indicating it had gone down hard at some point. I wondered about the previous owner. Was he (or she) hurt? Did he quit riding and just leave it at the shop after the insurance fixed it? It was a thing I wondered about but never an answer I really wanted to go out of my way to find out. I ended up riding it for 25 years until I lost the desire to keep repairing it and gave it away to a local kid who wanted a fixer up'er in 2012.

[robert52]

Some things yes I do think about what the new owner is doing / what they think of it.
Cars on the other hand no mainly because I have keeped them too long & all I can think of the cost they cost me / money lost

[arnold]

When I see a camera for sale with an explanation "belonged to my deceased father/mother" it makes me wonder how they can be so unattached to something that was a part of their family life. If you loved your father, wouldn't it bring back happy memories to look through the viewfinder he once looked through, when he took the family pictures? I suppose it is not as sad seeing a camera discarded, as seeing family photo albums end up in a second hand junk shop.

[GateCityRadio]

When I see a camera for sale with an explanation "belonged to my deceased father/mother" it makes me wonder how they can be so unattached to something that was a part of their family life. If you loved your father, wouldn't it bring back happy memories to look through the viewfinder he once looked through, when he took the family pictures? I suppose it is not as sad seeing a camera discarded, as seeing family photo albums end up in a second hand junk shop.

I'll never let my K1000 go. It was there from my birth all the way to my first day of high school before my dad retired it for a digital camera. When I went to college and took film photography classes it was there with me. I learned just about everything I know about photography with that camera. I hope to take several family photographs with it in the future and hopefully my son will be somewhat into photography and I can pass it on to him. I even have an old Kodak 620 film camera that went with my Grandfather to Korea. Never been able to shoot the thing because its missing parts and the film is hard to find. Just find it interesting that it has been half way across the world and has seen many things. My dad has the photo albums with the pictures taken on it.

I only had the K3 for a little while and while I took some important pictures of life events with it I figure the pictures that I'll keep forever are the most important treasures I have from it. I haven't grown very attached to any digital camera I've owned, not like the attachment I have to my K1000. I don't want to turn into a hoarder hahaha, but I guess its also different because of how often the new models come out, and how society tells you that you have to have the newest and greatest thing all of the time.

I have heard of friends in the past say they had a hard time trading in cars that had sentimental value. A coworker with a growing family told me a story about how his wife had a hard time trading in the car their first son came home in, really needed a bigger car however but I just thought that was interesting. I had a 2008 Sentra SE-R, the first newish car I bought. I went on my first date with my fiance in it and we went on several fun trips in it. I traded it about a year ago and cried on the ride home in the new car...lol. I even looked at the internet ad several times to see when my old car sold. Kind of weird how we make attachments to objects, but in reality its the memories that are the most important. Seeing family photo albums in a junk shop is just ridiculous....I could never do that. But I guess as the generations go on the attachment to those memories fade and they hold less value to the newer generation. Still sad though.

Good talk guys! lol. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

[robert52]

Some times when I buy some thing second hand I wonder what the person did with it / fun / memories etc
I also have had times trading in several cars not due to memories etc because they were junk & no one wanted the LOL
Kevin I think of you when I get my K3

[ChrisPlatt]

Often old photo gear I bought smelled of smoke and might have a film of tar.
But not so much lately. I guess most of those old guys have died off by now.

Chris