What is the market like for used Hassy camera sales?

Is there a glut in the market for Hasselblad cameras? I have tried

to sell a Hassy 501CM kit, but have had no takers, except for one

guy who wanted it at a absurdly low price. Just wondering what is

going on here. Or are MF photographers giving up on Hassy equipment?

Thanks,

Sid

The market is quite soft in general right now, for all but the latest and greatest kit.

Hello

There seems to be a bit of a trend to professionals moving to digital, which appears to have some impact on all medium format sales. It is competitive - Mamiya are now selling their Pentax 645 original copy at what must be near or below cost, just to get people into their brand of equipment.

 

To get a feel for current used prices, do a check on eBay for past sales of Hasselblads, and see what KEH or MidWest Photo or similar are charging for used gear (take off a chunk to see what they would pay you). Your idea of a reasonable price may be unrealistic, or you may have just picked a wrong time to try to sell. This sort of checking will either prompt you to change your price, or confirm that your desired price is realistic. Not everything sells first time. If you are selling on eBay, pay a little extra for lots of good sharp, well-exposed pictures - let the camera sell itself.

 

Regards, Ross

Values of manual focus medium format and 35mm equipment has gone done in the past few months. I have even seen clean Pentax 645 bodies go for under $500 recently, and manual focus Nikon lenses are noticeably down from a year or so ago. Blame it on auto focus and digital.

Last October; a e*bay seller in Hong Kong had the New 501CM kit for 1750 dollars US in the buy it now price. I did NOT get one; but got a Bessa R for approx 305 bucks. The 15mm Heliar waas about 150 bucks less than NYC prices; I don't have the exact figure handy. Both items arrived from Hong Kong to the USA in about 11 days after "PayPaling" him. <BR><BR>Here I bought a Kodak 750H slide projector with remote control and focus for 9 dollars. Last month I bought 3 circular Kodak slide trays for 50 cents each. Another weird "La Beller" projector was bought for 2 dollars; it has a 500 watt lamp and a longer 5inch lens.<BR><BR>"since everyone is going digital" these items are considered worthless<BR><BR>What is weird is that last year before 9-11 ; russian cameras on the auction sites were real cheap. I bought several cameras with lens and case for less than 30 dollars; and that included the 8 dollar postage fee!<BR><BR

Thanks a lot for your comments. I relly appreciate it. Looks like I chose the wrong time to make an impulse purchase, and so I am having a hard time selling a virtually unused/mint camera. :):)

Since I have no interest in the digital side of things, I hadnt realised what kind of inroads, the digital format has made, all the way from the point-n-shoot photographers to the pro level.

Thanks for your input.

-Sid

Keep listing it if you think it will sell. Consider selling the body/viewfinder, the back and lens separately. More photos are also a good idea, especially if you only listed it with one or two at first. Take the camera, lens and back apart and photograph each separately in several views. Offer to sell it internationally, if you didn't already do so and quote a fixed price for domestic insured shipping, so that there is no wondering by the bidder about total costs at close of auction. Use recently-closed auctions for the same kits

in the same condition as a guide for your reasonable selling price, and offer an opening price at an attractive reduction from that. Here you might think of using both the reserve pricing option to attract the hesitant and the "buy it now" option to provide a chance for a quick sale. Don't make the mistake of posting a ridiculously high price for a "buy it now"; that is annoying to bidders and is likely to make you look untrustworthy. Don't go longer than the 7- day term; 10-day auctions are unattractive and frustrating, bidders lose interest. The posters above are right on several points, there is a glut of gear, pros are turning digital, other systems are competing more effectively than in the past for the professional's

dollar, and the word is out that Hassy isn't the only good camera out there. All the same, stuff does get sold. Good luck to you.

check the KEH price, you can sell for 60 %, to say the market is

soft is to be kind.

Just keep it for now. Wait until the economy recovers more.

 

It's a great camera, and film is hardly dead.

I went digital crazy for awhile, but recently returned to using more

film again. The Hasselblads' true value is in the stunning

pictures it is capable of producing in the right hands.

Marc; plot the used price for the Hasselbad versus the Epson 2000 printer! What will the Epson fetch in 10 years!

Most of the pro's that I meet are talking digital now. A recently met friend that shoots product for both the American and South American market is selling his Fuji 6x8 to go digital 35. From what he mentioned to me, he can hardly get half the pay (let alone the work) nowdays of what he use to, so he has to make some changes to try and stay afloat. He off't his 6000 Sq ft studio to stay alive.

 

The other thing that I see is that a manual kit whether Hassey or otherwise is just not as appealing as what it use to be. By the time you figure in metering finders, extra backs, etc, you've got alot of money out of your pocket to recoup, and hey the work just isn't there to be making big expenditures. The big boy's (corporate and product shooter's) who have shelled out the bucks for digital will get more and more work, and the non-digital manual bodied users, from 8x10 to 6x6, will see their equipment decrease in price, and their work eventually go south, and I hear that from many, just like my friend above. Even wedding work is going 35mm as couples don't want to spend alot on pictures in a crappy economy. Of everyone I have met and asked who are shooting wedding work her in the south, most will say that enlargements rarely go past 8x10's. And those couples that can afford a larger photo budget are dealing with studio's that are using equipment that will live on and on. BTW, take notice of how many studio's are actually closing and selling off stuff on photonet and elsewhere. Basically what it comes down to is the economy is lousy for many and it's chances for short term recovery are dim, and if you want a indicator of what manufactuers are doing good and who's struggling, just watch the ads for new equipment.

Sid,

 

Agree with all the bad news already posted. A few months ago I tried selling all my Hasselblad equipment. After years I found myself using it less and less, and hated having so much money tied up in the stuff. I tried all the usual places (KEH, Ghitelman, etc.) with little success. Very depressing! KEH acted like they were doing me a favor just taking it off my hands, they were offering nothing. Other places refused to offer anything, saying they were hip deep in used Hassy gear. A newspaper ad went four weeks with not one response.

 

Some of the photographers I know considering MF equipment tell me they'd rather have the new AF 645 stuff. They all seem to feel Hasselblad is getting a little long in the tooth, and the new equipment is incredibly expensive.

 

And so it goes. Maybe it will get better, but I doubt it.

Sid,

 

You've got two things going against you right now that people have already mentioned.

1. the economy is slow, and for amateurs a hassy 501 is not a priority purchase.

2. a lot of pro's switching to digital dup their gear lowering prices. This also has an effect on amateur market that, if the pro's are going pro, I'd better do it as well.

 

However, most people calculate a payback on digital against film/development cost. The uptime of spending more time on image correction etc never gets into the equation. Things will normalize soon and people will start to consider that one of the reasons that digital seemed cheap was that a lot of work that lab people do for low wages now needs to be done by them. Don't get me wrong, digital is here to stay, but so will film.

 

Best regards

Bas

Kelly, I can already calculate the future value of my Epson 2000P.

It's ZERO $... because it just went south on me right in the

middle of printing 2 weddings. Unless Epson does something

for me Monday, I'm out the $800. plus the cost of the new 2200 I

got to match existing prints and meet my deadline. Technology

ain't what it's cracked up to be. Also, I ran into a technical

problem with my new Kodak DSC ProBack 645C for my Contax.

( 10 minutes before I left to shoot a wedding ) Thank God I didn't

sell my Hasselblad equipment...it saved the day.

Sid, I feel your pain (God, I hate that cliche). I recently advertised a 501cm based system with several backs & lenses, all in

beautiful condition, at a super reasonable price & not one bite. The economy is bad, these ARE luxuries, and I personally think Hassey will come back in the used market, so I'm keeping it even If I can't use it.

You know, Sid, you could just use it. It's a Helluva camera.

Even then, maybe this thread explains why I can't seem to sell my 50 CF Distagon, even at what I thought was a very attractive consignment price of $1450.

Digital, autofocus, paper printers via a computer. Shure, Hassy prices are going south, but in ten years the weding pictures that the loving couple have, had better be on archival paper. Opening a disk, file in ten years will probably be impossible so no reprints then. I would love to go digital and I will. Possibly even autofocus in 35mm. However, when I can purchase a mint Canon 14mm for under $500 out the door and I look at over $2,000, OK $2,600, for the same focal length in digital you can see my choice.

 

By the way, counting the silver grains on a 6 x 6 cm negative is like counting the stars. And, with proper archiving, you can print it in 20 years! I have some glass negative positive slides from the 1860's taken in India that make excellent prints. I guess that what I am saying is, if it is throw away, go digital! If it needs to last, the Hasselblad is hard to beat.