Many Leica M bodies are Under-Valued as same as Nikon.

[chuck_t]

I recently saw many mint or excellent condition Leica M bodies are sold

under-valued in bay auction. Many collectors lusted on camera like Leica M3

with serial numbers over 1.1 million few years ago. If my memory serve me

correctly, the finally price on those pieces sold over US 1500 dollars on

epray. And now, it depreciated a lot.

 

There isn't a difference on a Patek, Rolex swiss watch verse a Leica M

because both are well made, mechanical and we know that it will last forever

with regular overhauled. The funny thing is a dead accurate Timex or Seiko

Quartz watch did not take over the over-price and inaccurate Rolex or Patek

and yet, many collectors are still pursuit those timepieces and feel them as

priceless.

 

The most ridiculous thing is that most of us have cell-phone nowadays,

shouldn't watches be obsoleted years ago? I mean look at the RED Submariner,

Comex or a glit dial Sub or Rolex explorer, the prices are going sky-rocketed.

 

My Question: Why many collectors drooling on a vintage and inaccurate

timepieces but not on camera bodies?

[EricM]

a vintage time piece doesn't run on a consumable that's soon to be extinct, does it?

[jack_johnston]

---There isn't a difference on a Patek, Rolex swiss watch verse a Leica M because both are well made, mechanical and we know that it will last forever with regular overhauled. ---

 

There are many cameras, both 35mm, medium format and beyond, that are extremely well made and in some cases handcrafted that have fallen in value over the years. Prices don't necessarily have anything to do with quality of manufacture - it has everything with what people are willing to pay. I see finely crafted medium format equipment whose prices are dropping like a stone.

 

A lot of people are ditching the film format, and I'm sure that will affect the prices that Leica cameras are closing at for at least a few years.

 

I still firmly believe that at some point down the line, there will be a backlash against digital and people will become nostalgic - and want their old 35mm cameras back.

[icuneko]

<Why many collectors drooling on a vintage and inaccurate timepieces but not on camera bodies?>

 

Such watches are usually waterproof. Thus, drooling on them is safe.

However, Leica camera bodies aren't. Waterproof that is. ;)

[torben_daltoft]

Yawn; thought all of you ("Americans") had heard about the market mechanism

[bart feliciano]

Everyone will soon realize that a digital picture is like a ring in World of Warcraft. Ultimately not real.

 

<joke>

[EricM]

After a few rounds of quantum physics, I could care less what interacts with the shutter button now :P

[tom_levidiotis]

Expensive watches are more easily recognizable as such. More people, at least more Americans, "know" what a gold and steel Rolex for example costs than do what an M costs. People are anxious to be perceived as able to spend plenty on doo-dads, however useless. Leicas are different in the sense that they really do work (at least in the hands of skilled operator). Mechanical watches are simply no match for digital. Reasonable minds can differ -- at least currently -- with respect to film vs digital.

 

I suspect if Leica equipment was only seen with large obvious price tags the market would improve -- at least where I live, where people really do have more money than brains.

[david k.]

While Rolex's and leicas are both precision mechanical devices, the similarity ends there.....ever heard of anyone doing something creative with a Rolex??

[john15]

I don't know about Rolex value; in NYC last week and saw a couple of very friendly guys selling a bunch of perfectly good looking Rolexes for 15 bucks apiece.

[john_r._fulton_jr.]

"15 bucks" is the tourist price. :->)

[mark_ryan2]

I think these digital v. film discussions are always a bit odd. Everyone in the discussion is to some degree a digital creature by using the p.net forum.

 

The real analouge points of view are the guys with the rotary phones, TV remotes with cords attached to TVs without cable (don't even mention satellite), send money by Western Union, and think Photoshop the place in the mall with all the posters, and actually eat and like spam.

 

(By the way, if you are the Marketing Manager for Spam meat, where do you go with that? "Our Spam doesn't have viruses!")

 

Anyway, watches, mechanical or electronic, both give the same out put, time. No chemicals involved. My watch only gains 3 seconds a day, the digital clock in my Jeep runs 10 minutes fast after a month.

 

I think that there is more interest in RFs now than there was in the recent past. Cosina providing a true entry level camera helps. I think the future is bright in that dSLRs are so bulky, P&S cameras are so noisy, that RFs or dRFs could fill a niche need very well.

 

I personaly keep regressing. I went digital, then added a New F1 to my FD Canon stuff, followed by a Leica CL, then a Zorki 6, and now I'm looking at getting a Zeiss Ikonta C.

 

I feel like William Hurt in that movie where he is in the isolation tank and starts to regress into a monkey. With all those psycadellic special effects. Sweet Jesus, how high did you have to be to sit thru that whole movie?

 

Mark

[vinay_patel]

Watches are a ubiquitous wearable item and considered to be a legitimate fashion accessory. Cameras are specific-use items and collecting is more of a niche to begin with. Add to that Eric's spot-on observation "a vintage time piece doesn't run on a consumable that's soon to be extinct, does it?" and you have the answer to your question.

[bob haight]

Latest Leica LFI says film sales in Germany have fallen over 50% since 2002. That answers the question.

[bart feliciano]

Of course!

 

The shopping public is the SOURCE of all wisdom. That's why I only eat at McDonald's sicne they serve more food than most local higher end restaurants ;)

[ben_kriete]

Perhaps Leica M bodies have been over-valued for the last decade and the market is undergoing a correction? Or perhaps the rising cost of living in the US is prompting the middle-class to spend money on gasoline and electricty, leaving less money for cameras, no matter how collectable. Some people may be spending their money on iPods, XBoxen and other electronics, but I have a hunch it's a different demographic than the $1500 Leica collector anyway.

[bart feliciano]

Nah, let's face it luxury items, even functional ones like Leicas sell for what people are willing to pay.

 

'under valued' is kind of a red herring. The demand for film using cameras is simply dropping and the collector market alone can't sustain the previous prices.

 

Good for people who use them, bad for speculators.

 

Sounds like a good time to buy if you are a user like me.

[dead_metaphor]

Bart is right. There is no such thing as "under valued."

 

From an economic perspective, the value of a thing is simply what someone is willing to pay for something.

 

Ergo, the value of a leica is what they are currently selling for.

[al_kaplan1]

Back in the 1960's the photo mags were full of stories about The Great SLR Revolution. Used Leicas and lenses, both M and thread mount, were going for give away prices, Zeiss, Nikon and Canon all abandoned the market. It runs in cycles. Trying to guess the collector market is the bigger problem. Those "cheap Japanese Leica copies" made by Nicca have increased in value a lot more than real Leicas of the same vintage. Perhaps we should now be buying up those "cheap Russian Leica copies"?

[35mmdelux]

depends where you hang, no?

 

In this part of town Rolex Yachtmaster/ big diamond earing. (Sub ok)

[john_graham3]

"Back in the 1960's ... It runs in cycles"

 

The only thing running in cycles (and recycles)are these trips with Mr. Peabody and Sherman in the Wayback Machine, which would be cool (once in a while) if not for the preposterous conclusions. There is absolutely no intelligent parallel can be drawn between the falling out of vogue of rangefinders in the sixties, with the current exodus to digital and the collapse of the market for film cameras.

[Robert_Lai]

Speaking of watches, it depends on how well regulated the watch is, mechanical or digital. I have mechanical watches that vary less than 5 minutes in a month, and digital watches that go off 5 minutes in a couple of weeks. One digital would be notoriously poor, were it not able to correct itself every day using the Atomic clock time signal from Colorado. There's no question that a mechanical watch usually is more carefully constructed from a materials and craftsmanship point of view, and utilizes more precious materials (e.g. gold). But, back in the 1980s, when quartz watches were the rage, nobody wanted mechanical watches anymore. A lot of the Swiss watch industry went bankrupt. Now, people actually prefer the mechanical watches. A revival of fountain pens also occurred in the 1990s, come to think of it.<p>As for Eric's comment about using extinct consumables, try to get a battery for some of these early quartz watches. Try to get a refill for some of the early ball-point pens. They aren't made anymore, and that's why these revolutionary products are now worthless.<p>As for Leicas, they were never very common an item. Now that almost everyone shoots digitally, there will come a time when the image from a film camera will seem unique and different - with grain, and fine tonality in B&W. We may just have to wait 15 years or so for the pendulum to swing back.

[john_graham3]

"there will come a time when the image from a film camera will seem unique and different - with grain, and fine tonality in B&W. We may just have to wait 15 years or so for the pendulum to swing back."

 

Sure, why not? If that happens, film production could always be resumed :*)

[al_kaplan1]

What's your problem, John? Insecurity because your wife will throw you out if she ever discovers just how much money you spend on digi-toys? Go over to the Wedding Forum and you'll find lots of people either still using film or switching back to it for at least some of their shooting. North Miami has a a couple of sound stages and a decent MP lab. I can easily buy all the 400 and 1,000 ft. rolls of 35mm stock that I want locally. Eastman 5222 is a pretty nice B&W film, and it's easily developed in standard developers like D-76. I guess Kodak and Fuji are coming out with new films just to get the stockholders upset.

 

Me, I don't own any Canons (or other DSLR's). The last Canon I owned was a II-S which I then traded for a Leica III-f about 40 years ago.

[karl_keung]

take Nikon FM3a as an example, it was dirt cheap when it was released in 2001, but a mint in

box sample costs around $799 now, I guess a lot of its buyer are just collector, whereas the

price of the user grade F3/F4/F5 has been plummeting steadily.

 

just as a watch is more than a time piece, a camera could also be more than a picture taking

instrument, the prices are sometimes not dependent upon its true usage