Leica dramatic price drop?

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Just having read a thread here where a new M8 owner is thinking about selling all his film RF gear, I am starting to wonder if we will see the same dramatic price decrease in film RF that we have seen in SLRs. Is it possible that the market will be swamped with M5s, M6s and M7s?

Will wide angle lenses increase in price because everybody needs them now on their digital Rfs?

Could it happen............?
 
not necessarily 🙂 "could" doesnt mean 50%, it just means some %. can be 50 or higher or lower. but in my humble opinion, we are not so fortunate. Take the RD/1. even here in the UK, where used models appear quite often ( due to owners receiving the M8's I supose ) price is somewhat fixed in 1500/2000 usd, depending on condition. M7's which there is always a shop with 1/2 available used, are unfortunatly quite fixed at 2100/2500 usd. They come , they are sold.
M6's ive noticed a drop but light.

Some prices will drop, although not dramaticly. but unlikely, they "could" 🙂
 
I hope so. I'd love to get an MP for about a thousand bucks. Unlikely, though, unless Kodak, Ilford and Fuji all decide to drop their film/darkroom chemical lines and all the one-hour photo labs start closing.
 
I have the slight impression that here in Japan (Yahoo ! auctions) the prices for everything what carries "Leica" slightly increased. I bought my M6 end of January for ~ 1000 USD and recently all M6 that have been offered here were either more expensive or totally worn off (cosmetically, as could be seen from the photos)

On the other hand, recently the prices for "modern" equipent like the 70 - 200 VR AF-S zoom from Nikon dropped ... had a hard time to sell it for a reasonable price ....

Prices for Zeiss are also quite high (and Zeiss M-mount glass not so often to find) whereas prices for Voigtlander seems to be stable (and low)

-Gabor
 
I don't think there will be a huge price drop or ever, for that matter. Leica hasn't switched completely to digital photography and their film bodies are still made. They still pride themselves with their mechanical film cameras and will continue to do so for the time being.

The reason for a price drop in film SLR's is because of 1) the surge of dSLR's to hit the market and 2) the widespread demand to use one/for someone to use one. Many people and professionals like using SLR's. Digital is the accepted medium for most professional applications these days. It's easy to understand why FILM slr's were so quickly booted out by DIGITAL slr's.

Rangefinders, on the other hand, have not been in the spotlight for well over 30 years. It's now a niche market. Nowadays, people who use rf's have accepted that they will have to shoot with film (up until very recently, of course). Also, the lack in national/global market demand for digital RF's means there will probably never be the same digital surge that SLR's experienced. Therefore, film RF's will remain abundant and in demand by collectors, hobbyists (see the other thread), and the few professionals that choose to use them.

Price drops in bodies usually only ever happen when a new model comes out so everyone ditches their older body for the new one. This kind of happened with the M8 but not to the extent where the entire market price of the older bodies dropped - there were just a few more used film bodies available.
 
My site is tracking Leica camera body prices:

http://members.aol.com/dcolucci/mmount.htm

Leica M7's are starting to show up more frequently than ever. Most are in great shape with little real use. Ebay is tracking $ 1900 for ones in excellent cond. and about $ 2100 when they are even nicer with boxes etc....

Leica MP's arent showing up as frequently as the M7's...I gather because more M7's have been made.

As far as Leica M lenses,

The Summicron 28 ASPH is showing up regularly for sale - more so than all the other late model ASPH lenses. The lens I dont see anywhere, used, is the 75 Summicron. The 50mm 1.4 ASPH is also not frequently found on ebay ( used ) for sale.

I'd be happy to answer other market trends I see.....( like the one year skyrocketing of Noctilux prices ! ). About 16 months ago, I sold a Noct for $ 1600 ( earlier version w/hood ). Today it easily gets $ 2500. Thats a big jump in a short time, but shows you how digital is driving the market now ( plus a little help from the declining dollar $ ).

Thanks
Dan
 
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Price decrease - yes - dramatic - no. Because there were so much more SLR's in the market, and Leicas always had a much better collector's value than any other small format camera brand. The decrease already happened since ebay came up. A used M6 costed $2k+ in 1999, and around $1k+ now. It might go down to $600 or 700, but not to $145 like a fully working Nikon F2 body I recently observed on the auction site.
Didier
 
Interesting Dan! What about the price trends of classic M's (M3, 2, 4, 5) and LTM's? It would be nice to have graphs of price trends.
 
Meleica said:
I'd be happy to answer other market trends I see.....( like the one year skyrocketing of Noctilux prices! )
Dan
Click to expand...

I noticed a similar price increase for the M-mount 0.95/50 Canon. A year ago, a sample went for $450, now it's the double or even more. Collectors? Or R-D1/M8 users?
Didier
 
I do have pages for basically all leica lenses and M and SM cameras - see

www.antiquecameras.net

The rest of the M cameras have settled down in pricing as they are purely for the diehard film crowd, whereas the lenses can live on in the digital world. You should be able to find perfectly nice and usable M4, M3 and M2 cameras for $ 600 to 800 on ebay/RFF/pnet. The M6 TTL has held steady around $ 1100 in nice shape. The M8 will tank like a stone if there is even a hint of an M9 digital camera, but until then its price wont budge, even with its "bugs."
 
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testing testing *****

Noel

Hey Magus it is not just you it is me as well take about calling a ***** a ***** oops.
 
***** does seem to be censored. In some parts of the world, words are used to cause offence, whereas the same word used in another country is an innocent word.

It would appear that we are seeing American censorship here, which I can understand, to a degree.

Ernst
 
Back to the topic : NO

Back to the topic : NO

I don't think that it is anywhere near likely to see a dramatic price drop. A 40 year old working M3 will be as attractive in ten years from now for anyone interested in film. These mechanical bodies will still survive pricewise when there will be the M10.4 announcement out there. Since there are enough folks still looking for something in good shape, eveything that is on sale will get sold. Consequently why should prices drop? Sellers drop their price after a while if they can't get what they are asking for. Currently the prices are still firm. 😱
 
Is "spаde" an offensive term in American English?

Referring to the discussion here, I don't think there will be a dramatic price drop, because whatever is available in extra supply from the (few) M8 owners is eaten up by the demand. I think the M6s will be most significantly affected, as people will probably sell M6s etc. to finance their M8 purchase. Maybe this will trickle down to the M4 as well (people wanting to buy a midprice Leica buying M6s instead of M4, thus lowering M4 demand and thus prices). I don't think M5s will be much affected because there's too few of them.

On the other hand, at least here prices are already at a low; M2s go for about 350 EUR, M4s between 400 and 550 EUR, my M5 was 500 EUR, and good-looking M3s with Summicrons were selling for about 750 EUR. I don't think they will go much lower than that with the present rangefinder and B/W renaissance.
 
It seems that for every English word there is a sexual connotation. And no, I don't want to know what this one means 🙂
 
Just to put out an additional challenge - don't you think we are at the very beginning of the RF digital revolution? (I don't think the RD-1 was looked at as a serious challenge to Leica - too many issues and it didn;t have the "Leica appeal") Sure we are not at a point where the DSLR/SLR market was when the film gear was being dumped all over the place. The M8 still has issues and many people are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for the bugs to be fixed, but once that's done, more people will buy these - if you can afford an MP or M7, you can afford an M8.

Maybe the collectors will keep the prices up, but I have to believe that there are far more users than collectors of Leica gear. I know that many people love film (incl. me) but when you look at the M8 output, there is little that a film based body will add.

I do think we could see such a price drop in a couple of years - only time will tell.
 
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