The Future Price of a Leica M6

[Bart Bart]

100 years from now there will (hopefully) be nerds who will want to learn how to service older mechanical M cameras and luckily there will still be a large supply of donor cameras for spare parts. Not to mention that 3D printing will probably be amazing. But I doubt people will want to recreate 1970s electronic components and such, those may be a bridge too far.

If you think about long term, multi-generational collecting then approach it like the Eastman House or Victoria & Albert, obtain iconic camera lens combinations from each era or decade... a Vietnam War set with a Nikon F and 105, a M2-R w 35 Lux. Maybe an black 80s kit with a F3hp and 85/1.4, M6 with Noctilux, etc.

The basis for doing this is like art collecting, something to pass onto your descendants without the taxing authorities noticing. Also being relatively compact and easily hid, transported. Not as good as jewelry or Kuggerands but more fun.

 

[David Hughes]

One of the problems we have in these threads is defining a "price". We could, f'instance, look at completed priced on ebay but each price is decided by an individual and so some will be silly and low and BIN. Others will be high because there was a bidding war going when a BIN was a lot cheaper but that doesn't stop people fighting for the one camera they have spotted.

Dealers seldom agree on prices and, as a lot of people forget, there's taxes and duties* and delivery charges and so on and so forth. Being a poor old pensioner I spend a lot of time looking for bargains and finding them and am shocked at the high prices I see people have paid...

And then there's other factors forgotten; sell to a dealer and you get a low price, the same camera will be sold for a lot more and then there's sales tax on top. So just one camera came have two wildly different prices on it...

So just what do we mean when we talk about a price?

Regards, David

*And sometimes the camera arrives with no tax or duty charge for some unknown reason.

 

[ultra8]

So my forecast in this thread two years ago was very precise (see posting No 21) 🙂.

Why?
It is simple: Increasing demand for film cameras because of the general resurgence in film photography. Photographers suffer from 'digital fatigue' and are going back to the roots. And lots of very young photographers are now exploring the joys of film.

Cheers, Jan

I ask for facts, not dreams. Leica is currently used as an (hard) investment in times of crisis.

The demand for film is high, but significantly lower than in 2019. You can read that in the forecast from Kodak, Fuji and Ilford.

 

[HHPhoto]

I ask for facts, not dreams. Leica is currently used as an (hard) investment in times of crisis.

The demand for film is high, but significantly lower than in 2019. You can read that in the forecast from Kodak, Fuji and Ilford.

If you expect the demand being even higher in 2020 compared to 2019, than you are dreaming and out of reality:
We are in the biggest global economic recession since WW II - caused by the Corona crisis. You should not ignore that extremely important fact.

But nevertheless Kodak, Fujifilm and Ilford are not able to keep up with the high demand. Certain film types like C200, ColorPlus, Gold 200, Portra 400, Pro 400H, HP5+ and some others are permanently sold out. When a new batch comes in, it is often out just in hours as the incoming shipments are immediately sent to those customers who have preordered the film and are already waiting for weeks for their orders.
Several big film distributors have told me that. And I have experienced it several time myself with my film orders in the last months.

So fortunately film demand shows so far a relative robustness against the negative Corona impacts. In contrast to digital equipment sales, which have been in free fall over the last Corona months (look at the official CIPA data).

Cheers, Jan