1. Where the data comes from

Two kinds of source, and they behave differently.

Auction results. We collect published results from specialist photographica salerooms and from the camera lots in general sales. These are the prices the trade watches: a lot goes under the hammer once, in public, and the result is a matter of record.

eBay. We record completed, sold listings — never active ones, never “or best offer” prices that nobody paid. eBay tells you what a private buyer paid on the open market, which is usually a different number from the saleroom result, and often a more relevant one for ordinary equipment.

Every source is listed below with its record count and the period it covers. We do not hide the thin ones.

Coverage periods are not uniform, and that matters when you read a figure. Christie’s records in our set stop well before the others; the Leitz series runs to late in the range; the eBay feed is current. A model whose only records are old Christie’s lots is being valued against a market that has moved since.

2. What counts as a price event

A record only enters the price set if it clears all of these:

1. It sold. Unsold lots and passed-in lots are recorded as unsold and never priced. On eBay, only completed sales count — active listings and asking prices are excluded outright.
2. It is one item. Multi-item lots, “collection of five cameras”, body-plus-three-lenses bundles and job lots are rejected. A price is only useful if you know what was bought.
3. It is the item it claims to be. Every candidate is matched to a specific model in our catalogue, and every match passes an automated adjudication step, plus a rolling programme of human spot-checks, before the price is published. Records we cannot confidently attribute are discarded rather than guessed at.
4. The price is the price of the goods. Postage, delivery and import charges are stripped out. Currency-converted “approximately” figures shown by eBay are refused — we take the sum in the currency the sale was actually transacted in.
5. It survived review. Records flagged as unreadable or erroneous during review are excluded from every figure on the site.

Around 15% of the eBay listings we capture are rejected at review and never priced. Auction lots that fail attribution are discarded further upstream and never reach the price set at all. We would rather publish a smaller set we can defend.

3. How the figure is calculated

The headline value on a model page is the mean of that model’s 10 most recent qualifying sales. Sales that have been individually verified by hand are taken first, then the remainder in order of recency. The number of sales behind the figure is shown alongside it — if it says two, treat it as an anecdote, not a valuation.

On model pages without a written description, the opening paragraph’s range and median are calculated across every record we hold for that model, not just the most recent 10. The two numbers answer different questions: the median tells you where the model has traded historically, the recent mean tells you where it is trading now. A large gap between them is information, not an error.

We use the mean of a short recent window rather than a long-run average deliberately. Collectable camera prices move; a mean over twenty years would tell you about the market two decades ago.

We do not adjust for condition. We hold the description of each lot but do not currently grade it or apply a condition multiplier, so a mint boxed example and a shelf-worn user body both sit in the same average. This is the single biggest source of spread in our figures and we are explicit about it rather than implying a precision we do not have.

4. What this data cannot tell you

No price database is complete or neutral. Here is where ours is weak.

Every published figure is converted to sterling; individual records are not. A sale in Vienna is recorded in euros and a sale in Chicago in dollars, at the sum actually paid, and that is what the sale row on a model’s page shows — 40% of our records are in a currency other than sterling. Every average, range and median we publish is computed from a sterling figure derived for each of those sales, converted at the European Central Bank’s reference rate for the month the sale took place. Where we cannot derive one — the price basis is unknown, or no rate exists for that currency and month — we do not fall back to the unconverted number: the record is excluded from the statistics and still shown in the sale rows. 245 records (0%) sit outside the figures for that reason, so a model’s stated sample size can be smaller than its list of sales.

Salerooms do not all publish the same figure. Most auction results we hold are hammer prices — the sum bid in the room, before the buyer’s premium the saleroom adds on top. Christie’s publishes its results as the price realised, which includes that premium, and those records are 13% of our set. For some smaller houses the basis is not stated at all. So our figures are not strictly comparable house to house: a Christie’s record reads high against a hammer-only record for the same camera, by roughly the premium — commonly a quarter or more. We are working through the sources to establish and normalise the basis; until that is done, this is where we are.

Coverage is uneven. 7,992 of 32,136 models have any price data at all. The set leans heavily toward what specialist salerooms actually sell: Leica, Hasselblad, Rollei and the collectable end of the market are well covered; ordinary consumer gear from the film era’s mass-market decades is thin, and where it appears it is usually via eBay.

The market is mostly British and European. Our salerooms are predominantly UK, plus Vienna and one US specialist. If you are selling in North America or Japan, our figures are a reference point, not your market.

Auction results are not retail prices. A saleroom result is what the trade paid in the room. A dealer’s shelf price is higher — often substantially — because it carries a warranty, a return, and a service. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions.

Some old records have no exact date. 222 records arrived without a usable sale date. They are still counted in ranges and medians, but they sort behind every dated sale and can never displace one in a recent-sales figure.

5. How often it updates

New auction results are collected as the salerooms publish them, and the eBay feed runs continuously in the background, so the set grows daily rather than in scheduled releases. Rather than claim a cadence, we show you the actual state of the data:

• Most recent sale recorded: 9 September 2026
• Most recent import: 23 August 2026
• This page’s figures recalculated: 23 August 2026

6. Who runs CameraWorth

CameraWorth is published by Camley Photographic Limited, trading in cameras since 2012 — a company registered in England and Wales, number 08205572.

The disclosure that matters. Camley Photographic Limited buys cameras and sells them on consignment. The same company publishes these prices. We think that is worth stating at the top of the page rather than the bottom of a policy, because it is the obvious reason to doubt us.

Here is why we think the data is still straight. The figures are produced by an automated pipeline from published auction results and completed eBay sales; it has no input for what we hold, want to buy, or have sold, and no person adjusts a model’s figure by hand. Every source is named above with its record count, so any figure here can be checked against the saleroom’s own published result. And the incentive runs the other way from the obvious suspicion: a seller who is quoted a low figure goes elsewhere, and one quoted a high figure is disappointed at settlement. An accurate number is the one that keeps the phone ringing.

If you would rather sell elsewhere, these figures work just as well for that — our resources page lists other people we rate.

Contact: info@cameraworth.com

7. Corrections

If a price here is wrong, we want to know — a misattributed lot corrupts a model’s average for as long as it sits there.

Tell us via the suggestions board or email info@cameraworth.com, with the model page and, if you can, the lot or listing. We check reported records against the source, and where a record is wrong we remove or reattribute it rather than leaving it and adding a caveat.

8. Citing this data

Journalists, bloggers and researchers are welcome to cite these figures. We ask only for a link back so readers can check the source.

CameraWorth, How CameraWorth works out what a camera is worth. 54,717 recorded sale prices across 14 sources, 1998–2026. Retrieved 23 August 2026. https://www.cameraworth.com/methodology/

For a specific model, cite the model page and the sample size shown beside its figure. If you need a cut of the data we do not publish, ask.