Auction

You might be wondering why this 10mm f/5.6 Nikkor fisheye on eBay is commanding such a high price. Aside from its age, why in the world would an old fisheye go for $49,000, when a new one only fetches $775? But it turns out that the 10mm f/5.6 is anything but an ordinary lens.

It's not quite the most expensive camera ever sold at auction — that honor still goes to the prototype Leica O-series sold earlier this year. But at a rather astonishing 1,680,000 Euro, a Leica M3D passed the mark as the most expensive production camera ever to be sold.

As part of a contemporary art sale at Christie's auction house, a photograph by Jeff Wall fetched $3,666,500 — the most ever for a work of Wall's, and one of the most expensive pieces of photography of all time.

In early November, Christie's is holding a large photographic auction at their London branch, including work from such famous photographers as Irving Penn, Peter Beard, David LaChapelle, and Helmut Newton. Yet fairly far down the price list comes the most famous photograph of the 20th century, found on millions of college dorms, t-shirts, graffitied walls, and art galleries.