For the seller

Are old Polaroid cameras worth anything?

A Polaroid instant camera

Whether an old Polaroid is sought after comes down to one question before any other: is film still made for it? Instant cameras that take film you can buy today are used and wanted; cameras whose film died with the factory are ornaments, however handsome. After that, the model decides, and the differences are large.

The three families

The folding SLR era. Polaroid's folding single-lens cameras of the 1970s are the collected heart of the field: genuinely remarkable machines, still usable with film made today, and full of parts that age. These are the ones people hunt, and condition separates them widely.

The boxy integral cameras. The square, one-piece cameras of the eighties and nineties, the shape everyone draws when they draw a Polaroid, take film that is made again today. Most were made in enormous numbers and are wanted mainly as cameras to use, so working, clean examples move and rough ones linger.

Pack film and roll film cameras. The earlier cameras that took peel-apart pack film or roll film lost their film supply years ago. A few are collected for what they are, and some are converted by enthusiasts, but most are bought as objects, not as cameras. Handsome shelf pieces, honestly described.

The one-minute check

  • Open the film door and look at the rollers. Clean metal rollers are a good sign; dried chemistry crusted on them is the most common fault and the first thing any buyer looks at. Do not scrape it off; note it.
  • Look in the battery compartment on models that have one. The usual story: leaked cells, and what they touched.
  • Do not fire the shutter over and over on an empty camera, and do not force a folding camera that resists; the bellows and struts are the fragile part.
  • Keep the box, manual, flash bars and case together. As always, completeness carries real weight.

A note on the name

Polaroid is the famous name, but the same logic covers every instant camera in a collection: the instant cameras other makers built in the same decades, and the modern revival machines. Film availability first, model second, condition third.

In a collection

Instant cameras rarely live alone; they sit beside the 35mm bodies and the Super 8, often with a drawer of shot instant photographs that are family history and stay with the family. We buy the whole shelf, working and not, film-fed and orphaned, and the collection's story goes on with every camera, with the collector's name on it. What decides interest across all old cameras is in are old cameras worth anything, and the whole-collection route is on Pass it on.

Short answers

Which old Polaroids are worth the most attention?

The folding SLR-type cameras of the seventies, working and clean, with their accessories. After those, clean working integral cameras that take film made today.

Can you still get film for old Polaroid cameras?

For the integral and folding types, yes, made today. For peel-apart pack film and roll film cameras, no; those are collected as objects.

Do you buy single Polaroids?

No, only collections: roughly twenty objects and up, or fewer if they are exceptional.

Why we keep the story

A collection is not a pile of objects.

It is years of somebody deciding what was worth keeping, and sold off piece by piece that is the first thing to go. So before anything is sold, we sit down with you and record it: how it started, what the best of it was, the piece that got away. That story stays on every object with the collector's name, and goes with it to whoever keeps it next. You get a page where you can see where each piece ended up.

Three ways the story gets recorded

On camera, where it lives. We travel to the collection and film it properly: you talking about how it started, the room and the shelves as they are, the objects in your hands. Wherever in the world the collection happens to be.

On a call. If the collection is sent to us rather than collected, we have the same conversation over a video call and write it up, with one photograph of the shelf as it stood.

In writing. If you would rather not talk at all, answer a handful of questions in your own time and in your own words. It goes on the objects exactly as you wrote it.

It never changes anything else, and you can always say no to it. Some conversations run ten minutes, some an afternoon. Read the collections we have taken on

If it is a whole collection

We buy whole collections, not single pieces: one person takes all of it, and the story is kept with every object. Tell us what you have and a person replies within two days.

How passing it on works, in full

1The collection
What is in it
Pick everything that applies. Something else opens a line to tell us.
Roughly how many pieces
A guess is fine. Nobody has counted.
How would you describe it
There is no wrong answer here, and a lot of ordinary is a normal collection.
One or two sentences. This is the question we care about most.
2Where it is, and how it could reach us
Town and country is enough.
How could it reach us
Unseend is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sending and bringing are as welcome as a visit; if it is sent, we pay the freight and insure it.
When does it need to be gone
No hurry is a good answer. It lets us plan a visit properly.
3Condition and photographs
In your own words. Broken, incomplete or untested is fine and is normal; it only needs saying.
Photographs
Three to ten photographs The room and the shelves as they stand. Phone photographs are fine, and a slow walk round on video says more than any of them.Send them to hello@unseend.com
Or attach them to the reply that comes back within two days. Any of them works, and nothing is looked at until a person reads it. Do not clean up first — the shelves as they stand tell us more than a tidy arrangement.
4The number, and the story
A number or a range, whatever you have in mind. You will get an honest answer either way.
Would you tell the story of it
Filmed at the collection wherever it is, on a video call, or written in your own time. It never changes the price.
5How to reach you
The reply comes here, from a person, within two days.
Only if you would rather be called.

Answered within two days, by the person who would come, and by email at every step after that. Nothing you send is shared with anyone, and your photographs are deleted if we do not go ahead.

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