[Leica] Good Article on Print Pricing

[Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie)]

Hi Mark, I've just got up!
What I mean is that the internet has let the international community look at 
the prices charged worldwide, as opposed to locally.
I can only compare the UK with France and the USA, since these are the 
places I have spent a reasonable amount of time, though I could be out of 
date since I haven't been to the US for a couple of years.

What I noticed years ago that the "accepted" prices varied quite a bit from 
country to country.
The most notable differences between the USA and UK were the difference 
between art prices, salaries and commodity prices.
In the USA a painting or photographic print was offered for sale at prices 5 
or 10 times more than would have been seen in the UK.
Things like cameras and cars were much cheaper in the USA than UK (or France)
Salaries for similar jobs were much higher in the USA than UK, often more 
than double. Tradesmen charge far more for their services than in the UK. A 
friend of mine who moved to Indianapolis to work in the motor racing 
industry there bought a house in need of modernisation after checking out 
the prices of the bathroom and kitchen fittings and finding them much 
cheaper than the UK. What shocked him, though, was the price quoted by 
builders to do the work, it was at least 4x more than the UK and made the 
project very expensive.
French people typically spend 25% of their income on good quality food. In 
the US and UK we eat cheap junk food, in huge portions, which makes us fat...
And so forth.

Whilst the salary and food habit differences are unlikely to be much 
affected by the internet making people aware of them, a photographic print, 
available for sale over the internet from anywhere in the world, and 
available for agencies to sell from anywhere in the world, will end up 
costing what is accepted worldwide as the "value" and no longer what is 
considered locally/nationally as the normal price.

I hope I explained myself a bit better this time!

cheers,
Frank Dernie

On 27 Jan, 2013, at 14:22, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> wrote:

> Frank I'm not quite absorbing this could you maybe re phrase it maybe its 
> me
> I've been up all night time to hit the hay.  ?
> 
> 
> On 1/27/13 8:35 AM, "Frank Dernie" <Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com> wrote:
> 
>> There is perhaps a worldwide levelling of prices???
>> The USA used to have -much- higher prices for art, and much lower prices 
>> for
>> consumer durables, like cars and cameras, than here in the UK.
>> Internet "knowledge" causes these sort of things to equalise.
>> FD