Used Marketplace ?

[Franglais]

OP> I live in a city with a market of over one million people. We do not have one retailer that is interested in a fair used market.The only retailer we have that takes used in trade pays only a maximum of $50.00 for any dslr regardless of current resale value. We do not have one used dslr dealer of any kind that I have been able to find. Is this normal ?

Fr> Yes. The price of new digital cameras has been falling fast and the features of the cameras have been rising just as fast. Nobody wants to buy a used digital camera. A shop would only take a used camera off your hands if you were going to buy a new camera

OP> I've done a lot of recent research on ebay, our local buy and sell and the online refurbished market. I find prices in those realms to be unrealistically high. I'm seriously thinking of getting into used entry level dslrs as a vocation. As a buyer I would have no local competition whatsoever.As a seller on our local buy and sell I would have a maximum 48 hour turnover on my investments based on listing times I have tracked.Are other cities like this or do I live in a bizarre realm compared to other market areas ?

Fr> That sounds bizarre. I checked out my local EBAY. The actual bid prices are quite low (I found an example - a DSLR I paid $2200 5 years ago was announced at $500 and sold for $200). A friend of mine is a regular EBAY shopper. He usually buys something on EBAY, tries it for a while then sells it for the same as he paid for it

[Oldhippy]

OP> I live in a city with a market of over one million people. We do not have one retailer that is interested in a fair used market.The only retailer we have that takes used in trade pays only a maximum of $50.00 for any dslr regardless of current resale value. We do not have one used dslr dealer of any kind that I have been able to find. Is this normal ?

Fr> Yes. The price of new digital cameras has been falling fast and the features of the cameras have been rising just as fast. Nobody wants to buy a used digital camera. A shop would only take a used camera off your hands if you were going to buy a new camera

OP> I've done a lot of recent research on ebay, our local buy and sell and the online refurbished market. I find prices in those realms to be unrealistically high. I'm seriously thinking of getting into used entry level dslrs as a vocation. As a buyer I would have no local competition whatsoever.As a seller on our local buy and sell I would have a maximum 48 hour turnover on my investments based on listing times I have tracked.Are other cities like this or do I live in a bizarre realm compared to other market areas ?

Fr> That sounds bizarre. I checked out my local EBAY. The actual bid prices are quite low (I found an example - a DSLR I paid $2200 5 years ago was announced at $500 and sold for $200). A friend of mine is a regular EBAY shopper. He usually buys something on EBAY, tries it for a while then sells it for the same as he paid for it

On Ebay Canada you only see vendors willing to ship internationally. I deal part time in toy collectables so I know that US domestic-only vendors get only a fraction of what intl.shipping vendors get. The same rule applies to vendors in European countries. In the local marketplace I'm curious what the resale market is like elsewhere.

I am beginning to think that our hot local used marketplace is a product of used purchasers that have no idea what new product is selling for. I just returned home from my first unsuccessful attempt to convince a store to accept tradeins that I would in turn buy, sight unseen at my risk.

In good conscience I could not sell used product for the prices I see people getting here.Nor would I pay people as poorly as our one and only trade in store does. I think that earning a 100% profit on investment is more than adequate on a 24 to 72 hour turnaround.