Thrift Shop Sleepers --- talk about your latest treasures bought

As a big fan of hunting for any photo equipment bargains at the local thrift shops I'm hoping for other users to share their own bargain finds within this thread, mentioning the piece of kit, its condition and the price you paid for it. References to the specs (with or without pictures) are ofcourse also very welcome.

I'll kick it off with my latest find.

I found several this afternoon, 4 vintage macro rings (M42) for €4 ($4.38), a Yashica j2 in very good condition for €5 ($5.48) together with a 37mm f/2.8 Mir 1b lens (M42) in mint condition also for €5.

The Mir lens has quite a lot of fans going and after doing a few fast shots mounted on a Sony a6300 I can see the appeal as it is sharp wide open, produces great colors, is almost free of any abberations and is build like a tank.

The Yashica also came to life after inserting some batteries so all in all it was a good day for bargain sleepers :-)

My most recent was 3 brand new (with tags) LowePro Adventura SH II cases for $5 each. I think they originally sold for $30 each.

Others from the past: * Minolta Maxxum 5000 with 50mm, Minolta flash and strap, like new, $10 * Canon Pro1 with box, manual, papers and the filter ring, like new, $9
(Those filter rings are as scarce as hen's teeth!) * Canon AE-1 with nifty fifty, box, manuals, papers, brochures, strap, in excellent condition, $6 * Diana+ Deluxe kit in a nice no-name photographer's backpack, $12

My best ever was a Carl Zeiss Jena 35mm/2.4 flektogon, with 135mm/3.5 Sonnar, MTL5 body, camera bag and a few other bits for £10 (all in good condition) but that was some 4 years ago now. Here's a shot with the flektogon:
Rufus resting by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

More recently I found an Industar 10 (50mm/3.5) in among some plumbing fittings at a boot sale. They sold it for 50p (I don't think they even realised it was a lens) The optics on this are quite hazy, but everything else is good so I need to find time to clean it.

Last weekend another boot sale provided a good clean Mamiya/Sekor 55mm/1.8 with caps & a couple of extension tubes for £5.

I don’t ever seem to find anything good anymore - I think most have cottoned on to what this stuff is worth now - but my best ever was some years ago now, when I was rooting around a Salvation Army shop and my foot happened to strike an unassuming leather bag on the floor, which felt heavier than expected.

Inside was a mint condition Mamiya C220, along with a few rolls of 120 (expired in the seventies) and a few other accessories.

It had no price on it, so I took it up to the till looking as disinterested as possible and enquired.. £15 later it was mine.

Amazing camera and I had some good fun with it and some (non expired) film.. but as I couldn’t really afford to keep feeding it, I ended up selling it for about £180 a few months later. That money helped fund a move into Fujifilm kit which I’m still using today.

I have a couple of Industars. It's a Tessar design, but I don't find mine to be as sharp as a Tessar should be.
Probably there is a good deal of variation between individual lenses.

Topaz Sharpen cleans the images up somewhat.

Don Cox

I own a Nikon D50 and a D100 solely because they were attached to lenses I wanted to buy at Goodwill online. Don't even remember what lenses they were at this point. Can't give em away...LOL.