[Stavri]

I don't want to dabble in the semantics of value vs meaning.
Like many I have come to know the thrill of finding a nice piece of glass for a few bucks, I wish that everybody experienced such elation first hand many times over. By all means people dig wide and deep that's one of the characteristics of having a hobby. I'm not telling people to stop sharing their experiences either unless you're being braggadocious about it. In my opinion people who write a review on a lens they like or dislike (whichever sentiment prevails) do other people a disservice by including the circumstantial price of their find in the review.

[SpecialK]

I seem to follow the Milo Minderbinder principle - buy high, sell low...

[pinholecam]

There are reasonable/logical buyers and there will be frugal ones, there will also be el-cheapo ones too (who just love dirt cheap even if they are millionaires)
So why bother...

I buy wrt my means, what is commensurate in the market including like lenses from other brands and logic that one off 'lottery' cheap prices are not the norm.
Some guys on the other hand like to see what dirt cheap prices were and wait forever to find one at those prices.
Different strokes for different folks.

I really doubt the low price guy affects the market of the logical guy too.
He is too cheap to consider a logical guys sell price anyway.
So they really swim in different markets.

[Des]

On the flip side of the coin, I just bought a da12-24, fa28, fa43, dfa50, da70, dfa100, fa135, and a da50-135 in a bargain basement job lot (all in perfect condition). I won't tell you how much I paid, because everyone will hate me!

Go on Rob, I promise I won't hate you.

Nah, actually since I bought 3 of those lenses last year, I probably will.

[Sandy Hancock]

I seem to follow the Milo Minderbinder principle - buy high, sell low...

+1

Although I try to be sensible, I buy lenses for pleasure, and I don't sell them for profit. It removes a lot of stress.
If someone scores a once in a lifetime bargain and the seller is happy, all is right with the world. I have given perfectly good lenses away.

[Nicolas06]

Everything affect the price, and that's logical. There many factors.

For example at least in France amazon made a huge deal maybe 1-2 years ago with selling a Samsung camera, and adapter to K mount and a DA12-24, samsung version. The whole thing was priced 400€ (new) while DA12-24 sell alone for 800€+. You could buy the whole think, resell the camera quite easily and get a DA12-24 for less than €400.

What happened, it was said on the french pentax forum, many did it some to resell directly the whole stuff, some other to get a good 12-24 with warrenty and everything at a discount. The price of used DA12-24 was affected for a few months and I think less DA12-24 were sold because it was far less interresting to get a DA12-24 at 800€.

Last year a shop called fnac present in every big city of France made huge deal on DA16-50, DA50-135 and a few others. They wanted to stop selling Pentax apparently and get ride of theses thinks. They sold for rougly half the price all theses lenses. Again soon, it was not possible to find a 50-135 and 16-50 in fnac anywhere because it was know and all was sold. Again many appeared on the used market, resold for a premium and if you wanted to sell your own brought at the normal price, you either had to wait a few month or do lower prices.

We could go endlessly. Lenses are typically cheaper on Japan, US and germany than in France. Sometime too in England. But the customs make it almost worthless to buy from Japan or US except if you can hope to avoid the taxes because it add rougly a 30% to be put on the price you got.

If tomorrow there lot of garage sales on Pentax gear for whatever reason, the price of the gear will go down for everybody. That's for sure. If all the buyers managed to get one already, they'll not pay for another one. This is very basic concept.

So if in 2 years price of FF bodies drop quite a bit and mirrorless FF bodies become the new trendy things for everybody (like Sony tries to make it), all DA lenses will go down in price by a fair margin. if to help raise sales Pentax decide to develop a new DFA of redesigned FA lenses and sell them for low price (like DFA50 f/1.8, DFA35 f/2.4, DFA28 f/2.8, DFA85 f/2.4, DFA135 f/2.8) the price will go down for all K/M/F/FA lenses because there would be no reason to buy them anymore at least for most.

On the contrary if all new lenses Pentax produce are high end limited and DA*, the price of used lenses will go up. I only brought my first limited a DA21, used at €300 not because I really wanted it (it still has field curvature and it is still a bit slow apperture) but because there was no better offering for a small affordable wide angle with AF in Pentax line.

All of this is normal and as for the transactions that occurs I'd prefer them to happen in the open than to be hiden. From the graph shown we see price up to $300 for the FA50 f/1.7 that for me is a bit stupid price because you can have an FA50 f/1.4 or DA50 f/1.8 for less than that easily and they go with better bokeh or digital coatings. But still it happened. Like some got their FA50 f/1.7 for $50. Show all the price, it give an honest tendancy.

You'll know that if for 6 months - 1 years the price of FA50 f/1.7 are all bellow $100 that you can't expect to sell it for more and all the contrary if all prices go toward at least $200, that what you can expect it to sell.

So really take the information, use it, set your price, choose your buys and stop saying that you want other to have the knowledge so you can better abuse their lack of knowledge this way.

[AquaDome]

I't seems that more and more users are disclosing prices of gear bought in thrift stores, craigslist, garage sales, estate sale you name it during their reviews in the database. While I share their excitement on such bargains of gear that might otherwise see neglect, I feel that their disclosures are bringing the used price median values down considerably. I for one make a habit of not disclosing my unusual purchase prices (or methods) and I'd like to hear other peoples opinions on the matter.

The bargain-prices disclosed in reviews do not affect the median value of anything. They only affect the average price displayed in the graph on Pentax Forums, and I doubt anyone uses that as a market indicator. The graph shows the median and the out-liers. There should be no confusion there.

[wtlwdwgn]

Lowering the prices? There's a guy on eekBay with an SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4 for only $999.00. Of course there's the guy who's selling a Super Takumar with the SMC coating (!).

[vonBaloney]

Having sold many items both on the marketplace here, I find that TONS of people use the "average price" listed here as a market indicator, since almost every time I have someone try to get me to come down from my market-appropriate prices, they explicitly point to the "average" price in the PF listings.

But do they ever end up buying the lens at the real price? Probably rarely if ever. So I would say it causes some annoyance by bringing you people that aren't really buyers and you have to answer their question and tell them those review prices don't mean much, and see look here it just sold on ebay for much higher, etc etc. So you either have to brush them off or do some educating, and hence they can go forth and be smarter buyers in the future.

But all that doesn't actually interfere with the "real" market happening between serious buyers and sellers who know what they are doing. In other words, if those reviews somehow all had an accurate current marketplace value listed, I think you'd still sell your lenses just as fast or slow as you do now, and for the same prices. You'd just get less lookie loos. I'd also like to point out there are plenty of lenses in the review section that have prices listed that are far above their current value -- I sure wish I could sell some of the ones I have for those prices. But somehow nobody comes and demands to pay more because of those reviews...

[Lowell Goudge]

Every lens I bought was at the market price, i.e. What the seller. Oiled get me to spend at the time. Have I got some good lenses, sure, I have something like 20 M42 lenses, from 16mm through 300 mm. Almost Everything is a fast prime, 135 mm and below F2.8 is the slowest, with quite a few at F2 or faster.

Total cost for my M42 kit is $1200. With the most expensive lens 85/1.9 super tak, at 200

All good deals, below for the most part what people think is the market price at the time, but so what. To get an average you have to have both some below, and some above average, don't you?

Dose it bother me that someone finds a bargon not at all, unless I passed on it by mistake

[Stavri]

Having sold many items both on the marketplace here, I find that TONS of people use the "average price" listed here as a market indicator, since almost every time I have someone try to get me to come down from my market-appropriate prices, they explicitly point to the "average" price in the PF listings.

Even the graph has its problems if you are using it to try to determine current "median" price and outliers, since the only relevant price points for determining valuation in the present are the very most recent ones. Any price over a year old, let alone one from 2008, is so stale as to be basically useless. Now if you are trying to determine whether a lens will gain or lose value, long term trends might be more useful, but even here the self-selected nature of the reviews here is going to distort the data.

It is my understanding that most sellers here at the marketplace don't make a living selling their gear to fellow pentaxians, If someone does then I'd like to know who. I concur with "dcshooter" It might seem trivial to an educated pentax owner, but a lot of folks use the average price on the database to price or buy gear. I've also seen it time and time again on eBay where non-pentax users sell Pentax gear by referring to the average price and linking the database reviews.

[MD Optofonik]

Now if you are trying to determine whether a lens will gain or lose value, long term trends might be more useful, but even here the self-selected nature of the reviews here is going to distort the data.

If'n yer more interested in horse tradin' than takin' pictures of horses it's a problem.

[baro-nite]

I'm not worried about whether or not the price information in the reviews here, or in the Sold Items section of the Marketplace, or in the eBay sold listings, is somehow representative of the current market value. All I care about is that the prices listed are true, the actual prices for completed sales. Then it is information I can use to make my own determination of what the going rate is likely to be, whether I'm buying or selling. There is no way to somehow make the price information on this website reflect the total market. It is better to have the information we have than to have nothing. If naive buyers think you should lower the price because of the "average price" here, you're free to refuse. If naive sellers set their price too low, they'll learn quickly enough.

[timb64]

If'n yer more interested in horse tradin' than takin' pictures of horses it's a problem.

Absolutely - most of us here are are more interested in getting the most from our hobby of photography than worrying about making a few quid trading lenses.

[monochrome]

The Marketplace average price does not reflect the lens condition. In most cases thre reviewer neglects to qualify the price paid.