The other day my husband brought home his old Kodak Brownie box camera that was stored at his parent’s house. It’s the same style of camera I had as a child. His Kodak Brownie is different than mine was though, his was the special Kodak 50th Anniversary edition distributed free in May of 1930 to children who were born in the year 1918. Those lucky children would have been 12 the year of Kodak’s 50th anniversary.
My husband had thought that his grandmother gave him the camera but perhaps it was originally given to one of his aunts who was born in 1918 and grandma gave the camera away to clean out some things.
I did a little online investigation and discovered that it’s really not worth much right now but it is a good keepsake of his childhood. I don’t know what happened to my own Kodak Brownie box camera, it’s disappeared over the years but my husband’s is special with that 50th anniversary seal on the side.
If you’d like to learn a little more about the 50th anniversary edition and how they made this limited edition and distributed the cameras free to children born in the year of 1918 you can read about it here.
I took a few photos of the camera last night. They are interesting early cameras. The view finder is on the top of the box and you look down to see the scene you want to shoot. Of course they took the old roll type of film cameras did back at that time.
Photography and cameras have come a long way since then!
It’s always interesting learning about the history of the little things that people find laying about the place. I always wonder who decides that something is valuable, when you look at some of the junk that is worth a fortune, then you have interesting pieces like that that aren’t worth much at all.
Comment by ren — April 29, 2008 @ 6:26 pm |
Yep, it does seem like it should be worth more but just knowing the history behind it is interesting to know.
Comment by blulady — April 29, 2008 @ 8:00 pm |