Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4

Serial-range notes

2046001–3723802

THE RULE. Leitz never numbered a model from one and never put a date inside the number. Serials were issued in blocks drawn from a single running sequence shared by every lens the company made, so a number dates a copy only against a block list. Find it in the SN Start / SN End table on this lens's Leica Wiki page and read the year off its row; twenty-three blocks cover the Tele-Elmar between 2046001 and 3723802, and a number falling between them belongs to some other Leitz lens rather than to an undated example of this one. Failing that, the general Leitz lens year list maps the whole sequence to years regardless of model, and it agrees with every block on this page. The twenty-three blocks add up to exactly the 28,300 the head of the page prints.

3595960–3723802

THE VERSION LINE. The five blocks above — 3595960–3596459, 3621633–3621832, 3634901–3635400, 3658331–3658830 and 3722803–3723802 — are the only ones the table names Tele-Elmar-M, and they total exactly the 2,700 the head of the page gives that version. Nothing below 3595960 is a Tele-Elmar-M on the published evidence, which makes this the cleanest single test in the entry: the telescoping hood and E46 filters begin at 3595960.

2046001–2047000

1964, a year before the 1965 first year given at the head of the same page and throughout this entry. The general Leitz lens year list puts 1964 at 2015701–2077500 and so places this block in 1964 independently. Both dates are recorded rather than one chosen.

the first digit

The wiki's inscription line gives TELE-ELMAR 1:4/135 LEITZ WETZLAR 2XXXXXX and TELE-ELMAR-M 1:4/135 LEITZ WETZLAR 3XXXXXX, which reads as a rule: a two-million number is the older lens, a three-million number the newer. Its own table breaks it. The blocks 3414891–3415890 (1986) and 3469571–3470570 (1988) are three-million numbers credited to the plain Tele-Elmar — 2,000 lenses for which the first digit gives the wrong answer.

2384700 to 2420201

The knurl changes in this gap. The last block marked SFK — scalloped focusing ring — ends at 2384700 in 1969; the first marked UFK, unscalloped, begins at 2420201 in 1970. Nothing between them is assigned to the lens, so the changeover cannot be placed more finely than those two numbers.

2046001–2047000, 2082801–2084800

The only two blocks marked RS, red scale, and both are also SFK. Red scale with a scalloped knurl is therefore the earliest configuration and covers 3,000 numbers across 1964 and 1965; no later block carries a scale marking at all, so the yellow scale has no published range.

2907800 to 3414891

Eight years with nothing assigned. The list runs 2906801–2907800 in 1978 and then jumps to 3414891–3415890 in 1986, on a lens catalogued continuously throughout. A Tele-Elmar numbered in that gap is not covered by any published block for this model.

3722803–3723802

The last assigned block, 1995, against the 1998 end given at the head of the page and throughout this entry. No serial numbers have been published for the final three years of the model.