On July 12, Aston’s Auctioneers of Dudley, England (about halfway between Liverpool and London), will feature the Russian Collection auction, 25 lots of rare and unusual cameras collected from the Cold War days, when Russia merely constituted much of the U.S.S.R. and Germany was still separated into two states.

“To find as many [cameras] in one place is pretty unusual,” says Tim Goldsmith, photographic consultant to Aston’s. The unnamed source for the auction had been collecting Soviet spy cameras for 30 to 40 years, as far back as when smuggling anything of this sort in or out of the Soviet Bloc would have needed spycraft itself. “Obviously, that’s when East Germany was still completely surrounded,” says Goldsmith. Until recently, finding such a trove in the West was nearly miraculous. “And it’s unheard of in the U.K., though it’s dribbling out since the whole universe discovered these things on the internet.”

Aston’s hosts three camera auctions a year, yet this one, as Goldsmith put it, “has fired everyone’s imagination.”

Manufactured from 1942 to 1990, these cameras are museum-quality, and nearly all the lots are in working order. The end of the Soviet Union, combined with advances in tiny digital cameras, means that collectors have limited opportunities to score authentic, old style, film-based spy cameras, let alone ones that still work.

In the sale are several Minox cameras, including a rare Minox Riga, which was the first and smallest sub-miniature ever sold commercially by the brand. Built in Riga, the capital of Latvia, it was in production only from 1938 to 1943.

Microfilming, fingerprinting, and copying cameras are also on the block, but the highlights are the several spy cameras disguised as ordinary objects.

These include cameras hidden in an attaché case, a cigarette pack, and one built into an umbrella. There’s even a camera built into a man’s jacket, with the lens hidden behind one of the buttons and fired from a ‘trigger’ in the jacket pocket.

Lot 178 is an IMBIR 16mm silent movie camera disguised in a ladies shoulder bag. According to Goldsmith, this is a kind of pre-GoPro apparatus “as used in ‘Honey Trap’ scenarios” of yore, when female spies would gather kompromat via illicit encounters.

In total, there are 16 spy cameras and about a dozen accessories, including a Soviet C-215 Surveillance Periscope used by the Soviet KGB and East German Stasi to look over walls and around corners. Goldsmith declined to discuss pricing estimates, saying, “It’s really difficult to value these things … there’s only one or two sold every year.” Looking at concurrent collectibles auctions that Aston’s is running, nothing tops the low four figures.

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