U.K market becoming saturated ?

[dee]

Tried to sell a couple of really nice Fed 2 to my ASdee friendly Leica dealer. [ to finance CLA kiev ! ]

A year ago , he would have sold them on for about £90 , now it's £30 -
There are just too many about - and people are less worried about buying direct through e-bay etc .

Any thoughts on this - I picked up a Uk sourced K 4 mint , originaly sold in Uk , for £27 incl post .

Not that I ever bought a Soviet camera to sell !

I just like Kievs better than Fed 2 !

dee

 

[kevin m]

There are far more film cameras about then there are film shooters.

When used Leica MP's crack the $1,000 barrier, we'll know the end of film is near. 😀

 

[briandaly]

There are far more film cameras about then there are film shooters.

When used Leica MP's crack the $1,000 barrier, we'll know the end of film is near. 😀

When this happens, let me know. I'm fed up guessing the exposure on my M2😀

 

[Keith]

M7's are one camera that seem to have got a lot cheaper of late. Quite possible to get one for under $2000 now and I saw a nice looking one go for $1700 recently somewhere!

I guess there's no reason why MP's shouldn't follow the trend.

 

[Pablito]

M7's are one camera that seem to have got a lot cheaper of late. Quite possible to get one for under $2000 now and I saw a nice looking one go for $1700 recently somewhere!

I guess there's no reason why MP's shouldn't follow the trend.

Well, it seems to me there might reasons the MP might not follow the downward price spiral. The M7 is electronic and battery dependent, not mechanical like the MP. Some might see the MP as the last "real" Leica; those who like mechanical Rolex watches, for instance.
Personally, I'd be much more intersted in an MP if I were looking, but my M6's are all I need and I don't really care what they are worth on the market.

 

[fanshaw]

£90 for a Fed-2!!!
I have been buying and selling these cameras for years. I have seen no softening of the price in the UK. £30 is a good price for a Fed-2. Only an item in truly exceptional condition would fetch more.

 

[wolves3012]

I've noticed an upward trend on the FSUs on Ebay, but not a huge one. £30 for a FED 2 is a high price, my two cost me £16 and £25-ish, both in good order. I have noticed that the listings (UK anyway) are getting much leaner for anything except FED 4 and Zorki 4/4K models.

The ones that fetch much higher prices are the FED 1 and Zorki 1 models, plus the rare ones like the Zorki 3/3M. Recently a non-working NKVD went for £70 ish and a Zorki 2C went for £60 ish but that's partly the Ebay-lottery, no doubt.

 

[Ade-oh]

I think we'll see dealer prices for secondhand film cameras coming down because they won't want to invest money in stock they can't shift but I haven't noticed any great decrease in peer-to-peer sale prices on Ebay and the like.

 

[mcgrattan]

The couple of FSU things I've sold recently went for less than I'd expect. Whoever bought them got a bargain. I'd think 30 wasn't a bad price [for the seller] for a standard Fed-2.

The Moskva I had in the classified ads here didn't sell at all.

 

[zuikologist]

Ebay prices seem to all over the place. There still seems to be good demand in Europe, especially Italy.

 

[rxmd]

A year ago , he would have sold them on for about £90 , now it's £30 -

Is that £30 for each or for all of them? £30 for each is already not a low price for a FED-2. I paid less than that for a very good Fedka FED-2 with new curtains, including shipping from Israel.

There is not so much of an FSU craze as there was a couple of years ago.
Even collector's items are not worth as much as they were. A friend here is sitting on a Kiev 5, a Narciss, a TSVVS and a very early FED-1 that he can't seem to get sold for the price they would have fetched some years ago.

Note also that "good", CLA'd, Oleg-ized etc. FSU gear will fetch only marginally more money than average gear.

This is nice on the other hand because it allows us to get gear for cheap. I have about 10 Soviet rangefinder bodies and I think I paid less than 200 EUR in total for them over the years. This includes a Drug, a Zorki-3M and a 1949 Kiev.

Here I am currently looking for someone producing fake Leicas so that I can have a few custom ones. FSU cameras are an obvious money-losing enterprise, and I won't go completionist and start hunting for really rare stuff, so I'll probably start looking at weird, cheap and quirky things instead. 🙂

Philipp