[Leica] Re: survival of leica as a company

[Summicron1@aol.com]

could be, jonathon, but the law of supply and demands is a mysterious and 
strange thing.

Take my stereo cameras, for example. They are high precision instruments, 
very expensive when new ($175 for a Realist when a Leica M3 was selling for 
$350 or so). The company went out of business and all the Realist cameras are 
now collectibles.

Expensive, right? No. A good user is $150 and a really mint example is maybe 
$300 for the more common version. Why?

Supply is frozen, but demand is small. There are only a hard core of stereo 
shooters around who want to use the things to take pictures, and they mostly 
have cameras. The high supply of realist cameras (more than 100,000 were 
made) means someone who wants one can always find one.

Leicas, if the company goes bust, will be the same way if demand does not go 
up. 
And, the fact that the company seems to be having trouble selling its stuff 
would tell me that demand will not go up, at least not in the long run, 
because all you hard core types already have lenses all over the place and if 
there were a lot of new people wanting the equipment the company wouldn't be 
going bust, would it now? It would be selling lots of new stuff to people who 
would either be first-time buyers or would be replacing old stuff they soldto 
eager buyers.

Since neither scenario seems to be the case, with nobody wanting the new 
stuff (ok, not a lot of them anyway, if you guys are correct) and the old 
equipment not wearing out and needing to be replaced, and not sought after 
enough to encourage users of the old stuff to be willing to sell, I suspect 
if Leica went under tomorrow there would be a brief flurry of buying of old 
stuff by speculators, but in a couple of years it would blow over. Unless 
something happens to make Leicas a demanded object by the great unwashed (any 
way to get Brad Pitt to use one in a movie?) it's stuck.

charlie trentelman



jonathan wrote:

From: "Lee, Jonathan" <Jonathan.Lee@hrcc.on.ca>

Subject: RE: [Leica] survival of Leica as a company


Charlie,

You have a point, but even if you will never buy new Leica gear, the law of

suppply and demand makes the price of the used stuff dependent on the

availability of new gear.  For example, a used non-ASPH 35 f2 now is going

to run under $1K.  If there were no new ASPH 35s, that price would go up

because all the people who wanted to buy the new ASPH 35 now have to buy the

used non-ASPH.  And since the supply is fixed, price is up.  If Leica goes

out of business today, everything Leica made becomes quasi-collectible and

the price will go up.