By Ked · August 2026
August 2026
DRAFT — pending review, not final
The 35mm Summilux has generated more special variants than any other single Leica lens: sixty-five years of production, a hand-ground optical dead end that became one of the most expensive user-grade M lenses on the secondary market, an entire generation most buyers have never heard of, and a reissue whose own marketing collided with a nickname this site already had to correct once. This post covers the 35mm Summilux specifically, the variants that sit outside the primary version lineage covered in our Summicron 35mm story: the ones with their own order codes, their own production stories, and in a few cases their own genuine confusion about what they actually are.
A note on sourcing before we start. Several of the numbers below (unit counts especially) are disputed between Leica's own serial-number records and the figures that circulate in dealer and reviewer copy. Where that's the case we say so and give the range, rather than picking a number and presenting it as settled. Rare-lens pricing is volatile enough that any dollar figure here is a snapshot of what's listed as of August 2026, not a permanent number.
The first 35mm Summilux, produced 1961-1966 under order codes 11869-11872 (black paint and chrome), gets its name from an exposed stainless-steel front ring around the filter mount and hood fitting, a detail dropped from every 35mm Summilux made after it. Optically it's 7 elements in 5 groups, designed by Walter Mandler and Erich Wagner, with a 10-blade diaphragm. Total production is disputed: Leica's own serial-number tables (via the Leica Wiki, sourced to Erwin Puts' reference data) put assigned serials at roughly 7,500, while a commonly repeated but harder-to-source figure of around 1,500 shows up in dealer and press copy. We'd lean toward the higher, serial-table-backed number and treat the 1,500 figure with skepticism.
The Steel Rim is soft and low-contrast wide open, sharpens up by roughly f/4-5.6, and suffers real focus shift as it's stopped down, a genuine optical property of the pre-floating-element design, not internet lore. It's a documented, inherent limitation of every rangefinder-coupled 35mm Summilux built before the 2010 FLE redesign specifically corrected it. Collectors buy the Steel Rim for that character, not despite it. As of August 2026 we see 28 active listings identifiable as Steel Rim spanning roughly $3,400-$38,200, a wide enough range that condition and completeness (case, hood, box) matter more here than almost any other lens we track.
Between the Steel Rim and the aspherical lenses below sits a 35mm Summilux most buyers have never heard of: the non-aspherical second version, produced from 1967 to 1995 under the reused order code 11870, in chrome and later black anodized finish. The optical formula is unchanged from the Steel Rim, still 7 elements in 5 groups. What changed was construction: the steel front ring was dropped in favor of standard chrome or black anodized finish matching the rest of the lens body, most likely to accommodate a revised Series VII filter and hood system rather than as a cost-cutting move, though we couldn't find a source that states the reason with full confidence.
This is, by calendar years, the longest-produced 35mm Summilux generation Leica has ever made, twenty-eight years against the Steel Rim's five and the current FLE II's four so far. It was also sold concurrently with the hand-ground AA lens below for roughly three to four years, the affordable option next to the expensive one, both wearing the same "Summilux 35mm f/1.4" name plate. Shooters who know it describe the same warm, glowing rendering as the Steel Rim, without the steel ring's collector premium attached. It's a legitimately underrated way into vintage 35mm Summilux character at a fraction of Steel Rim or AA money.
This is the lens most people mean when they say "the rare Summilux." Order code 11873, 9 elements in 5 groups, with two hand-ground aspherical surfaces on both the front and rear element groups, a construction Leica has not repeated on any other lens. "AA" stands for that double-aspherical design.
The manufacturing story is well documented and it's the reason the lens exists in such small numbers: the aspherical surfaces were finished by hand, one skilled specialist grinding and polishing each element on a dedicated machine, with a high breakage and rejection rate. It was never a scalable process, and the cost of running it is why Leica replaced the AA with the single-aspherical v4 ASPH in 1994.
Production numbers and dates are genuinely disputed, not just imprecisely reported. Leica's own serial-number tables show batches in 1988 (3,000 units) and twice in 1993 (500 each), totaling 4,000 assigned serials across a 1988-1993 window. Reviewer and dealer consensus, independently and repeatedly, converges on a much smaller figure: roughly 1,000-2,000 units actually built, with production sometimes described as having been cut short mid-batch. Both figures keep showing up from credible-seeming sources, and the likeliest explanation is that Leica reserved serial blocks well ahead of the units that were actually completed and shipped, given the well-documented yield problems in hand-grinding the aspherical surfaces. We present both figures rather than picking one.
One number to explicitly discount: you'll find headlines citing a $695,000-$750,000 AA. That price is for a single one-of-a-kind silver-chrome prototype (a heavier brass-bodied lens, not a production unit), not for a standard black production 11873. The real market for a clean production AA runs considerably lower, and even that has moved: sources from the early 2010s cite $9,000-$13,000, while more recent listings and dealer pages put clean examples closer to $18,000-$30,000. As of August 2026 we track 9 active AA listings asking $15,300-$32,600, averaging around $20,900, consistent with that upward trend.
The AA's rendering, if not the lens itself, is now available new. Light Lens Lab, a workshop known for faithful recreations of discontinued Leica formulas (a 1966-spec Noctilux f/1.2, an 8-element 35mm Summicron), released a double-aspherical "11873" homage in late 2025: 9 elements in 5 groups with aspherical surfaces modeled on the original AA concept, though it's a reinterpretation rather than an optical clone, using molded rather than hand-ground aspherical elements plus added ED glass for better digital-sensor performance. The barrel is aluminum rather than the original's brass (brass survives internally, in the helicoid), in Black Paint or Chrome finish at $1,399, or a limited Titanium Grey edition at $1,699. Reviewers report it genuinely delivers AA character, the luminous glow wide open, vignetting clearing by f/4, though with a longer focus throw than the original and a hood some reviewers found bulky and unfriendly to standard filters. Every review frames it as a user's lens rather than a collectible: at roughly a fifteenth of an original AA's price, it buys the rendering, not the resale value or the history.
A stainless-steel 35mm Summilux FLE shows up in some references as "Edition 600." That's the production quantity, not the name. The actual product is the Leica M Edition 60, marking the 60th anniversary of the M system (1954-2014): a boxed set pairing an anthracite-leather M-P (Typ 240) with a matching Summilux-M 35mm FLE, both individually numbered from 001/600 to 600/600, designed in partnership with Audi Design. Leica's own materials describe the visible metal parts of both camera and lens as machined from solid stainless steel, not a chrome or steel-tone plating over the standard aluminum barrel; the standard 11675 FLE lens weighs 320g, and Leica never published a standalone Edition 60 lens weight, but the one documented combined-kit figure (1,280g for camera plus lens, against roughly 1,000g for the standard pairing) implies a lens closer to 550-560g once the camera's own confirmed steel-parts weight gain is subtracted, nearly double the standard lens, consistent with real steel rather than a thin finish, though that number is an inference from combined figures, not a published spec. Optically it's the standard FLE formula in a different shell. Worth noting: the everyday silver-anodized 35mm FLE that trades used around $4,800-$6,400 shares the same base order code (11675) as the limited stainless M Edition 60 lens, so a "code 11675" listing on its own doesn't tell you which one you're looking at. If it isn't individually numbered and paired with the matching camera, it's the standard lens.
Leica's 2022 Classic Line reissue reproduces the original 1961 optical formula, 7 elements in 5 groups, 10-blade diaphragm, in modern coatings and glass (the original glass types are no longer manufactured, so the "same formula" claim refers to the prescription, not the literal 1961 glass melts). It launched at $3,895, and reviewers describe it as genuinely faithful to the original's character: soft and glowing at f/1.4, sharpening by f/5.6, the same focus-shift behavior as the vintage lens because it's the same optical design. Leica's own marketing called it the "true King of Bokeh," a slogan that collides with an already-established nickname on this site: the Summicron-M 35mm f/2 v4 (1990-1997) earned that exact "King of Bokeh" title years earlier, and it's the Summicron, not any Summilux, that the phrase refers to when collectors use it. Treat Leica's 2022 tagline as marketing copy for that specific product, not as this lens's real nickname. Worth knowing before buying new: the reissue has a documented reputation for quality-control complaints in its early production run, reported independently by more than one reviewer, on a lens that costs roughly a tenth of an original vintage Steel Rim.
Leica's olive-green Safari finish traces back to military-contract cameras from the 1960s and has recurred periodically as a civilian collector finish since. The current 35mm Summilux Safari, part of a late-2025 rollout of Safari-finish M lenses, is the standard FLE II optical platform in matte olive paint with a silver-chrome brass focus tab, priced at $6,795 new. It isn't sold as a hard numbered edition, just "limited quantities," a genuinely different model from the numbered editions above. As of August 2026 we track a handful of active listings in the $5,900-$7,000 range.
The special-variant market rewards a specific kind of caution that standard-generation buying doesn't. Verify what you're actually looking at before you pay a premium for it: a code number alone (11870, 11675, 11869) can point to a completely ordinary production lens or a genuinely rare variant depending on the year and finish, since Leica has reused and overlapped codes across production eras more than once in this family (11870 alone covers both the mid-1960s tail of the Steel Rim and thirty years of the non-aspherical V2). Ask whether a special edition was originally sold solo or as part of a matched camera set, since an orphaned lens from a set like the M Edition 60 is worth meaningfully less than a complete matched pair. And where production numbers are genuinely disputed between Leica's own records and collector consensus, as with the AA and the Steel Rim, rarity claims in a listing title are marketing, not verification.
Browse current Summilux-M 35mm listings on UsedLensTracker, or filter directly by edition on our Titanium and Safari pages to compare current asking prices side by side.