[Leica] Leica Heirlooms? Future Value?

[rdcb37 at dodo.com.au (Rick Dykstra)]

Thanks Douglas.  You've really got your finger on the pulse there.  
Like a kid in a lolly shop though, I'm sure, surrounded by all that 
good stuff.  :-)  Rick.


On 22/02/2005, at 11:08 AM, douglas.sharp@gmx.de wrote:

>
> Interesting question Rick, has "general" interest in buying Leicas and
> lenses fallen by a great amount?
> Anybody in the trade got any idea how well used gear is selling?
>
> I've noticed, here in Hannover, that the s/h shops are full of used 
> Leicas.
> This started about 18 months ago and you can now get more or less 
> everything
> that was quite rare a while back, Safari R3 (2 of them each close to 
> 1000
> euros with the 50mm), IIIG (4 or 5, very expensive none below 
> 1200euros) R5
> and R7 (about a dozen all told)R6 (4) R6.2 bodies are high and quite 
> seldom
> found, quite a few SL, SL2, SL2 "50Jahre", hardly any Mots have been 
> seen
> for a long time, loads of screw cameras. Very few lenses are on sale, 
> mostly
> 50s and 35s. Lots of M4-Ps, M6s, M6-TTL, a platinum M6 has been 
> sitting in
> one shop for over 2 years. One shop even has a hammerlack LHSA MP (?) 
> for
> sale (new).
> This is only the overview of three shops in the centre of 
> town(Hannover is a
> provincial capital with a population of about half a million)
>
> I think there may be other price factors beside the digital boom :
>
> 1) the older (oldest) models are coming on to the market from younger 
> people
> who inherited them and don't know what to do with them.
> 2)People are converting unused Leica equipment into ready cash, I'll 
> even
> venture to say that a lot of these people may belong to the masses of
> unemployed (Hannover is running at close to 20% at present).
> 3)I was told of a couple of cases where people financed their new M7 
> with
> part exchange of older stuff but, apparently, this doesn't happen 
> often.
> It's quite interesting to note that the re-sale value of R6,R7 and R6.2
> is a  lot closer to the original price than is the case with used R8s 
> and 9s
> and that M2,M3 and M4s are holding on at a high level, particularly 
> clean
> M2s are commanding around 1200 euros, a rise of around 20% compared 
> with
> 2001.
>
> Prices are now in general relatively low when I compare with the 
> levels 2
> years ago, most of the other top brands are now on sale s/h at 
> throw-away
> prices, starting at about 25 euros for simple SLRs (eg Yashica,Ricoh)
> and only topping the 1000 for rather special items like RTS II and III
> Contaxes and high-end Nikons, Canon manual focus SLRs seem to be 
> holding
> their own but the bottom has dropped out of the market for early EOS 
> models,
> the EOS EF-lenses are very rare s/h.
> Minolta, Pentax and Olympus SLRs are rarely to be found, with the Olys
> topping the price list.
>
> Watching the prices of digital SLRs I've noticed that there is a lot of
> competition and drastic price cutting going on and you can nearly 
> always get
> them to knock a further 50 off the asking price.
>
> With such amounts of good, and quite recent (loads of R8s), equipment
> flooding the shops I can't really see a price boom happening anywhere 
> over
> here, unless the total demise of Leica (perish the 
> thought)automatically
> makes some models into rarities.Maybe there will even be a premium on 
> those
> Leicas built before the present range, most of these have already had 
> time
> to prove that they are reliable (with a couple of exceptions)
> Douglas
>
>>
>> On 22/02/2005, at 9:33 AM, V.Roger wrote:
>>
>>> Anyway- Leica Film Cameras will still be
>>> heirlooms for our kids- vroger
>>
>> And isn't this an interesting point.  Will our recent acquisitions of
>> R8s, 9s, M7s and MPs, not to mention lenses, be worth more if Leica
>> goes under?
>>
>> Rick.
>>
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