Where to sell MF gear?

I'm considering getting out of (amateur) MF photography for

purely financial reasons, and selling my MF equipment. Given

that I'd like to sell my whole kit, not piece it out, and sell sooner

rather than later, where are the best places to sell? I'm thinking

outfits like B&H or KEH are likely candidates, rather than eBay or

the photo.net classfieds. If it makes any difference, we're talking

about mint Pentax 67 gear. Any help much appreciated!

"Sell sooner rather than later" means that you will are willing to sell for less than it's worth? Is that a correct assessment of your position? Sure, KEH will give you *something* for it, but it will be a lot less than you could sell it for yourself.

 

What about this: find out what KEH is willing to pay for your gear, and then start the bidding at that point on eBay. All it would take is a single bid and you're dead even with what KEH would give you. And since that opening bid may be laughably small, you may see more bids than that.

 

The point is, if you have $3000 worth of gear, you'll be lucky to get maybe $1100 from a dealer. If you're selling for financial reasons, why not try to maximize your return?

Kits of gear seldom sell well - I would like to imagine that there are people out there who would like to have my kit, but in reality everybody has different opinions and requirements, so, unless you have a typical "body and three lenses" system, you would get more if you sold it item by item.

I've sold a lot of gear to B&H, KEH, others, and through photo.net classifieds. My experience is that it is useful to use the KEH web site to get an estimate of the value of your gear, and then call B&H, Adorama, Midwest, Pardees, or whom ever, to see if they'll do any better than KEH. I have had very good luck using the photo.net classifieds. If something is priced fairly (fairly is a bit less than the used prices at places like B&H for comparable gear), you can usually move it fairly quickly.

One other comment - you will nearly never come out well trying to sell your stuff as a complete kit. Most buyers don't want the whole kit, and they'll discount the kit to reflect the value of the pieces they actually want. I don't know how much stuff you've got, but you'll generally do better if you are willing to break up the kit. Sometimes kits sell for close to the value of the pieces on eBay, but my experience is that you give up some value for the ease of dealing with just one customer on the sale.

I'll chime in to agree with the above posters. To get a ballpark

estimate of what a dealer like B&H or KEH will give you, see what

they're selling comparable gear for (used) and cut it in half. Pretty

depressing, huh? But if you're really pinched, you don't have a lot of

choice.

 

The two things that will hurt your selling price the most? "I'd like

to sell my whole kit, not piece it out, and sell sooner rather than

later."

I've bought my entire Pentax 645N system via eBay piece-by-piece as I decided to carefully add components. I even sold a few things through eBay. I had no success with Photo.net classified. The above advice is sound. If you want to get a decent amount out of the equipment go to KEH's website and copy down there selling price for the equipment you have considering its' condition. Then subtract 10 to 15% and list individual pieces on eBay with that dollar amount as your starting bid. Set a "buy-it-now" at the KEH price or maybe a few dollars higher. Good luck with it! If you just want to dump it at a loss I'm sure someone here will take it off your hands.

KEH is conservative in their condition ratings, judge your equipment values relative to theirs accordingly. Your best bet is to sell each item individually on E*ay.com, listed with a photograph. Forget reserve pricing; list a start price at about two-thirds what an online dealer would retail the same condition item. Sell on a short three-day auction if you want to get it over with quickly.

Take a payment by Paypal or other online credit card agent; the penalty is small if speed of transaction is your priority. If selling is for financial reasons then you will not find a larger market to sell to than online, and you will certainly get more than you would ever get from a dealer.

I know you said you did not want to sell on eBay, but, from the business I do on that auction site, that will be the fastest and will give you the best profit possible, but do not sell it as a kit...sell each part individually.

 

The dealer stores like KEH will give you almost nothing for your equipment...they must resell it...I know from very sad experience. They will give you 20% of its value at best.

 

Join eBay, take some photos, post it for a 3 or 5 day sale, get price ranges from Shutterbug or from completed items on eBay so you can do a "buy it now", and you will get more than it's worth on the retail market.

 

Do not discount eBay or other reputable auction sites. I am an eBay advocate since they have many fine safeguards for the sellers and I have done well through them both buying and selling.

 

What equipment are you selling? Email me.

As a rule of thumb, B&H will pay you roughly half the amount they can re-sell the item for. For example, if they can sell a used lens at $1000, they'll pay you $500 for it. It is not all that unreasonable, as they need to pay you up front while the lens may sit on their shelf for a couple of months, and there is their overhead and the warranty they provide, etc. I once dumped a unpopular lens to them because I had a hard time selling it myself.

 

However, in the last 6 months or so I had sold 7 times right here in the phone.net classified. There is no E-Bay who would have taken a cut. I worked with the buyers directly and everybody was pretty honest, fortunately for me.

 

I was told that used camera equipment transactions are seasonal. Initialy I tried to sell those items in November/December. The popular items went pretty quickly, but apparently people would rather buy new items before Christmas. I tried to sell the remaining items in May/June and they all went in 3, 4 weeks.

Robert

 

If it is Rollei equipment you want to sell, I would list it on

the Rollei Users Group web listing.

 

Jerry Lehrer