KEH prices INSANE now

pixelatedscraps

pixelatedscraps

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Anyone else noticed this? Prices in brackets are the prices I recorded in December, when I last bought anything:

Nikon FM2N 'BGN' = $199 ($119)

Nikon FE2 'BGN' = $179 ($89)

Leica M2 'BGN' = $959 ($751)

It was bound to happen but where are the bargains now? Or does this mean there are no bargains anymore? Cos my salary sure as hell hasn't increased by 40% in the last 3 months.
 
Its wishful thinking. The economy is bad. Some businesses, seeing their sales die, raise prices to keep profits up from the few sales they have. Its suicidal; if fewer people could afford the old prices, fewer still can afford the higher ones.
 
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You did a comparison of now and some time in the past. If you go a little further in the past, $199 for a FM2n would be a bargain.

How many cameras do you buy on a monthly basis for it to effect you?
 
Or alternatively, either supply could be down (fewer cameras getting dumped) or demand up (recovering economy, renewed interest in film, weak dollar makes over seas purchases better, etc).
 
I gotta agree with Crawford on this. Raising prices when everyone is poor is just stupid. Hopefully for KEH (and the thousands of businesses using the same model) there will be enough rich people to keep them afloat so they are still around when we recover.
 
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I also noticed that the supply of, for example (since these are what I keep an eye on) Leica M bodies & lenses, and Minolta MC/MD lenses seems to have dried up in the last few months. I'm glad I bought what I could when I did - but I bitterly regret selling my M6 TTL 0.85 a bit over a year ago, as in the current market I could not get one in as good condition for anything like what I paid (and I even had the bloody thing CLA'd, can you believe it?)
:(
 
Hope it goes down again in the near future.

I was going to buy my first M body at this time of the year but seeing the rise in prices I now cannot afford to buy one.
 
I´ve a feeling this is a trend we see all over. If you look at the different used camera price guides, they all seem very conservative, even if they are updated within the last two months. Rolleiflexes especially seem to have made a hike upwards lately, at least the Planar/Xenotar equipped ones, and not to mention the T (for a reason I can´t fathom)
 
last month I bought a hexar rf from keh at 550, and a v4 35mm cron for 1300. both were BGN condition and were in great shape. i think those were ok prices.
 
Maybe the supply of old cameras is actually starting to dry up. Eventually folks will start just throwing them away when encountered rather than repairing and/or selling them. That would certainly increase the prices at places like KEH. Whether KEH can actually sell at the higher prices is another matter.
 
I called them yesterday, and ordered four Canon RF items. I was happy with the prices I paid, in fact, two of them were "reduced".
 
The notion of a used camera price increase is rather US centric. From a European perspective, prices are still falling on average - what you see is merely the currency imbalance, plus the occasional up on a recently hyped product.
 
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i checked with a local shop here in asia, the chinese are snapping up alot of gear to ship back home to sell. i suspect keh is not immune to this as well. and its the popular stuff that gets bidded up, eg. 80mm planar hasselblad are ridiculous right now or the m6 bodies.

so it isn't too hard to guestimate which ones will be popular. first the leicas, then the hasselblads and then the TLRs. Then ?

raytoei
 
I've been expecting prices of classic cameras to rise. They aren't making any more M3s you know. But the pool of potential interested parties is growing due to increasing wealth in places like China, India and Russia. If Japanese people alone can own half of all the M cameras on earth, what will Chinese people do? The Nikon FE/FM series is definitely classic, a huge bargain at $100-$150.

I've already seen the same thing happen to classic 1950s-1960s audio gear. Western Electric, Altec etc. stuff is being pushed higher by new interest in China and Russia. I myself sold some Altec stuff to a guy in Russia, and some giant 1950s RCA speakers to a guy in Hong Kong. They paid huge amounts for shipping alone. (The RCA speakers took two whole pallets. To Hong Kong. Think about that.)

On top of that, the dollar is of course losing value as well.

Pricing will be constrained on the upside by new production alternatives. I'd rather have a new Zeiss Ikon than a 1990 M6, for the same price.
 
I find this thread interesting when juxtaposed with the "film is dying" threads. Film cameras are going up in price due to supply and demand issues. Film manufacturing is shrinking due to supply and demand issues. Really there is only one thing to do, all these collectors should be taxed. I suggest that they must buy two rolls of film per month, per camera. I don't care if they use it, but if the collector market for film cameras is healthy, damn it, the film market should be healthy too. :p
 
Looked at from a different perspective, it's a great time to sell some Leica gear. It isn't just KEH. I haven't made a ck of sellers like Koh's Camera and Igor's, but I did look at eBay, and $1000 seems about what you will pay (or get) for a decent M3 now. eBay's prices relate only to their own universe, so I wouldn't read too much into this.

A year or two ago you could buy a Bgn KEH M3 for $650, but at that time the economy (all I know is the US) was a lot worse than now. I suspect that w/ the economic uncertainty, people generally weren't buying much, and camera sellers were worried that they would be stuck w/ a lot of stuff that was just sitting on a shelf. Now people have a sense, real or not, that things are slowly turning around, and prices are going back up to what the market will bring. If sales stall, prices will go back down.
 
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Check out KEH's Leica M lens section. They just sold a 50mm summicron (current, but not coded) for $2,300, and now they have a LN- 50mm summicron (also current but not coded) for $2,799 (and that does NOT include caps, case, or box). Folks, this lens is $1,995 NEW from Leica!!! That is just nuts! I think Leica needs to get some product to market.

Regarding folks in China snapping up lenses. I recently sold my 35mm Summicron IV on ebay to a Chinese fellow in LA who, I believe, promptly shipped it to Asia.
 
The same thing happened with selected high capacity Japanese motorcycles in Australia in the eighties. Bikes like the Z1R, GPZ1100, CB1100R, Suzuki Katana 1100 all suddenly disappeared from the Oz market and the ones that were around were going for crazy prices. They were being bought up and shipped off to Japan where enthusiastic buyers were paying twice what they were worth in Oz.
 
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