Vintage

The Story of the Rare $10,000 Golden Pentax LX Camera

Chris Gampat
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01/29/2021
3 Mins read
Pentax LX Gold1

The Pentax LX was a really cool camera, and it comes in gold!

We try to find really, really cool things here on The Phoblographer. Our Vintage series is all about that. And the latest search bore quite a bit of fruit. At the same time, it’s also the ultimate paradox. We can all agree that this is a camera you’d never want to bring outside with you. Instead, it would stay in a safe or under some thick glass. But if you know anything about the Pentax LX, you’d wonder why they did this. Another part of your brain might lust for it.

You see, the Pentax LX isn’t a normal Pentax SLR camera. Part of what made it revolutionary is the weather sealing. The Pentax LX is today hailed as a testament to weather sealing. If you’re looking for a weather-resistant film camera, this is to one to reach for, according to Casual photophile. If you get a really good one, you’ll be fortunate. Canon and Nikon have them too, but not at this price. 

This begins the odd paradox we have. Pentax did the cool thing of creating a special edition. Special edition cameras are always fun and cool. I’ve bought a few over the years. If you want to stand out from the crowd, they’re the way to go. But this special edition Pentax LX is made of gold. According to MIR, it’s an 18 Karat gold with brown lizard leather. It was created to celebrate a sales milestone. 

The Pentax LX is on our list of popular Pentax cameras everyone should own. We stated:

“Introduced in 1980, the Pentax LX was the company’s top-of-the-line manual focus camera, and was their only attempt at entering the professional 35mm SLR camera market according to camera-wiki.org. Apart from the vast selection of K-mount SMC lenses, it also used a dedicated series of accessories like interchangeable viewfinders and viewfinder screens. Some notable features, as cited by Wikipedia, include manual and aperture priority exposure modes, mirror lock-up, self-timer, depth of field preview, horizontal-running titanium shutter curtains, off-the-film-plane TTL metering, and “Magic Needles” film take-up spool that simplified film loading. The camera body, aside from being smaller and lighter than rivals like Canon New F-1 or Nikon F3, also had water and dust protection. All these features made it one of the finest mechanical 35mm SLR cameras ever made.”

What we have here from user breguetcamera is just that paradox. It’s the golden Pentax LX with a 50mm f1.2 lens. Better yet, it’s stated to be in nearly perfect condition. That justifies the $10K+ price tag. Granted, we found a few small scratches. But in my opinion, if anyone is literally pixel peeping your camera, you need to tell them to back off.

If you get this camera, I probably wouldn’t go ahead and use it. Instead, go for another Pentax LX and score a weather-resistant lens too. They’re far cheaper. Going for the gold is part of a treasure hunt. You’re finding something scarce that wasn’t highly made. This is, in some ways, a keepsake to pass down within the family. One day, your spawn might end up on the Antiques Roadshow. They’ll be talking about the camera the same way people do with watches. Your collection could make them a lot of money in some tough financial times. 

All images from the listing by breguetcamera.

50mm f1.2 camera gold gold pentax lx lens pentax Pentax LX rare rare camera vintage
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.