Originally posted by rogerstg You might want to re-read the OP. It's TonyT that IMAGINED that an offer COULD BE based on an item sold for parts NOT the shop owner. Imagining the worse case scenario is not reality and usually counterproductive. He should have got a real price and could discuss it from there, including discussing if the shop owner was referencing an item representative of his lens; working or not, fungus, etc. By arguing IMAGINED scenarios, he lost the opportunity to discuss reality and to make a deal.
Please show me these statistics because that has not been my experience, and I've bought a number of lenses and other items on eBay. eBay's search of sold items is not that robust and does not go far back. For example, I've been looking for a good deal Pentax-D FA 50mm F2.8 Macro. My search of sold items results in 3 hits ranging from $190 to $435. Sometimes there will be a rough copy or parts lens among the items I'm searching, but not usually.
Do you know the difference between a multiple of something and a fraction? For example, ten time less than 100 is -900. One tenth of 100 is 10. They are not the same.
Again, you're simply imagining something or convinced that you can read minds. I'm on the side of reality, not imagined possibilities. I understand that this is the internet and some people like to get their panties in a twist, but making things up to bash others for self aggrandizement goes too far. (not referring to you Serkevan, just to some of the more asinine assertions in this thread).
"He explained to me that what he does is take the lowest sold price and then cut it in half and that is what he will offer for the item". That's exactly what it said. The lowest sold price if you don't add additional filters will be of either a for-parts or well-used item in less than pristine condition. In my experience with Ebay the going rate is typically ~5 times higher than the lowest you can find for a functioning item - of course, as you said, it depends on the time that you check. Today, a Pentax-M 50/1.7 shows as "sold" (not for parts) on my side of EBay in a range of 6€ to 55€ (not counting delivery). Most of them are clustered around ~40€ so let's take that. How much is 3 compared to 40?
I've also been to pawn shops and checked how much they offered (not for lenses, but still). The maximum you can hope for is 10-20% of what they are selling similar items for in the store. You aren't getting half, ever. And, again, I'm talking about 500-1000%
revenue increases, I know the profit for the pawn shop probably won't be more than 100%.
And yes, I'm fully aware that a tenth is not ten times less - it was a slip of the tongue and you understood perfectly anyway
.
EDIT: about the statistics, every time I've sold or bought an item on Ebay (so n=about 40) I've researched the "sold items" list for a couple weeks. For many items there wasn't a lot of info (one item sold here or there at completely random prices) but for the ~10 or so that are more common the differences were very stark. The lowest variation was on a Canon 6D about a year ago. Used models were selling, depending on wear, from 300 to 800€, roughly. Average price of 600, which is a factor of two over the lowest - although I do remember only a couple items being under 450 and the 300€ body was
very banged up from the description. The "basic" Pentax-M primes (28/50/135) sell for about 40-50 bucks each on average but it's trivial to get them for 10 or less (I know because I did). So on and so forth.
By the way, the local pawn shop has a Pentacon Orestegor (the 200/4 15-blade M42 lens) for 50€, I got mine a month ago for 12 (delivery included) on Ebay. And it's in better condition
EDIT 2: Another store here has a 18-55 kit lens (the oldest version) for 99€ used. I count 8 sold under 18€ on Ebay (with half actually being about 10€).
Last edited by Serkevan; 05-21-2020 at 06:10 AM.