The first set of lenses were presented with the Contarex I at Photokina in 1958 and initially scheduled for delivery in the spring of 1959, but they were not made generally available in the United States until March 1960.
Their exemplary performance has led companies to make mount adapters to fit them to modern digital cameras.
[1] Noted Leica historian Erwin Puts obtained the Modulation Transfer Function curves for many of the lenses designed by Zeiss and published them on his website, noting "the special smoothness and depth of the Contarex lenses can be explained by these [MTF] curves.
They may not be the sharpest lenses ever, but the rendition of shape outlines and surface details is most pleasing and subtle like a poem.
"[2] Marco Cavina compared two rare Contarex lenses (the S-Planar macro lens and Vario-Sonnar 40~120) in 2008 with newer counterparts made for the Contax SLRs built by Yashica/Kyocera, hailing the older lenses as providing "very beautiful and satisfactory results" while lamenting the awkward operation of the Contarex camera bodies.