‘This is not my camera’: Woman trusts camera repair shop in LA with family heirloom but the camera they return sets alarm bells ringing

You can’t put a price on a family heirloom; what might be worthless to some holds infinite sentimental value for others. One woman on TikTok who brought a family heirloom in the form of her late grandmother’s camera to a repair shop claimed that the workers swapped out parts of her camera, leaving her wondering if what she was given was really her grandmother’s old camera.

TikToker Kai George found a 1960s vintage film camera, posting the find to Threads, where she was met with tons of positive feedback from others who told her that her camera was a “prized possession” and that she should never sell it. The camera in question was a Rolleiflex 3.5f Planar Zeiss, a very expensive camera that is being sold for nearly $2,000 on sites like eBay.

But the find had more value than money to Kai, as it had belonged to her grandmother, who passed away in 2020. Wanting to get it cleaned, Kai decided to take the camera to Walter’s Cameras and Digital Repairs. The worker talked her through what needed doing and which parts needed replacing, telling her it would come to $450.

But it would end up costing her a whole lot more. Kai was left devastated when she returned after claiming that parts of her beloved camera, which she called a family heirloom, had apparently been swapped out by one of the employees at the store. Some suspected the whole camera may have even been stolen.

The camera parts had been swapped

“This s–t will definitely turn into a lawsuit if I don’t get my camera back in the initial condition that it was,” she warned the worker. Kai then showed pictures comparing different parts of her camera before and after, circling the small details that proved things had been changed. Another picture Kai shared showed matching serial numbers on one part of the camera but the text looked “visually different.”

Kai was visibly upset as she described her concerns that parts of the camera had been replaced with someone else’s. She noted that the employee had told her he’d acquired the same model of camera and wondered if he’d taken the parts from her grandmother’s for his own. 

Viewers had the same thought: “He swapped the whole camera,” one commenter wrote, “I hope u made a police report as theft, then sue his ass.”

In an update video, Kai confirmed that she was getting her camera back and had been sent a video by the repairman showing what he claimed to be her camera. However, Kai still suspects that large parts, if not all, of the camera have been replaced, and she’s called upon TikTok to help her identify any differences she may have missed. She also claimed she had informed the police about the matter.