If I may politely disagree with just one point: these 58mm f/1.4 Nikkor-S lenses may not be quite so rare as they seem - they come up on Ebay fairly often.
Link to Roland's web site: http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/f5814.html
I need to update that page, it was created when I was experimenting with mini pages for each lens to show more details, links etc, rather than just one big list as in the main pages. Never got far with that concept - would have taken too much time and effort to create and keep up to date.
The serial numbers at
http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html#50fast are more up to date. You might notice the start serial number 140051 and end number 179051 are exactly 40,000 apart, so that is commonly sited as the number of lenses produced.
However, there is a gap between 144388 to 148099, I have never seen a lens in that range even after years of looking. That is a gap of over 3700 units. I suspect a few serial number rings were never used - kept for spares - so the production is likely to be less. Total production might be closer to 36,000 units.
So it not a common lens, but not as rare lens as some want you believe either. It's more common than the 45/2.8P, much more common than the 58/1.2 Noct, and still more common than the AFS 58/1.5 Neo-Noct (although that will probably surpass the old 5.8cm in the next few years).
