Speaking of "brass".... a little perspective on Leica prices

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Just thought I'd pass along this little epiphany - yesterday I bought an M6 body to keep me going while the 4-2 is in the shop (can't stand having just one body - makes me itch).

I was feeling a little 'buyer's remorse' however. $1095 for a CAMERA BODY!??

Then, just by chance, (or maybe not) I stopped into a local hobby store that bills itself as the "largest model railway store" in the US.

Do you have any clue what HO-scale brass model railway engines/rolling stock go for? (and, BTW, just how beautiful they are when still in raw unpainted brass?)

I saw at least two locomotives - unpainted and 7 inches long - that cost over $1495. A 30-car freight train for someone's basement would cost more than my entire 7-lens 3-body (and counting) M system. And that's not counting the trackage and scenery!! And it still won't take any pictures!

No wonder my wife encourages my Leica habit - anything to keep me away from model trains!!

(but, man! they are pretty l'il suckers!)

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), April 28, 2002

Answers

Which hobby store was this? I'll hafta check it out (I'm in Denver). Another hobby that's expensive is trap shooting. Krieghoff and Perazzi shotguns regularly go for 8000+ bucks, and then there's club membership and shells. Golfing, skiing, yes indeed, I think I get a lot out of my equipment- a lasting product of the activity are the photos. Then there are home entertainment centers, etc. Makes Leica gear seem pretty modest in price.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), April 28, 2002.

Andy,

Are you serious or are you just joking ?

I'm a railway modeler... I know very well the price of brass items but also the complexity of them and the very limited number they are made for each series...

The comparative is totally unfair! Brass price, as a metal, has nothing to do with the cost of these totally handmade gems (gems to see but not ever to use on your layout by the way). By the way, I'd be very happy to find here in France any second hand M6 TTL or even M6 body for $1095... The minimum price here for a so so in appearance Leica M6 is more than $ 1700 ! ...

Leica M brass body parts are much simpler to produce than a HO or N brass locomotive or even boxcar and the series is tremendously more important (even if it is a small series by camera body standards). The archaic way they are produced is the only excuse for the price the M bodies are sold... I'd really whish to know their exact manufacturing costs by the way... I think it would be rather sobering for us, poor customers (and happy taxpayers), most of the components of an M6 or M6 TTL and the machines they are produced on being amortized since years. For me this price question is the "dark side of the force" of Leica... It may be reassuring for the owner to justify the price he pays for an M body with such arguments, but it doens't hold a minute when facing the facts. And if it only concerned only the new bodies, it would be just tolerable but this policy of overpricing things has bad consequences even on models out of production since years. I don't know the average price for a mint M5 body in the USA but this once much criticized and allegedly failed model (I don't agree but commercially it was a failure) is still worth $ 1000 on second hand market here in France... pesky collectors and even more pesky speculators...

So, unless it is a joke, please refrain this kind of commentary as it encourages Leica to maintain unjustified (and unjustifiable) prices which one day or another will make the M series disappear.

Friendly

François P. WEILL

-- François P. WEILL (frpawe@wanadoo.fr), April 28, 2002.


My friend up the street just bought a pair of speakers - $30,000 total. And I can't even tell the difference!

-- Ken (kennyshipman@aol.com), April 28, 2002.

About 3 years ago Marklin electric model train co.in Germany, if memory serves me right had a Z gauge (tiny-1"to2" long)locomotive at retail for $5000.00 ea. Made of solid gold with diamond headlight and ruby tail lights!All sold out before leaving the factory!Makes Leica seem reasonable.

-- Emile de Leon (knightpeople@msn.com), April 28, 2002.

Also a friend of mine in New Haven CT puts in absolutly top of the line stereo systems in mansions for the rich....just the wiring can cost $20,000 for one job...not including the actual equipment. He was talking LOTS $$$ for the whole set up.

-- Emile de Leon (Knightpeople@msn.com), April 28, 2002.


Having been an audioholic at one point in my life, I can categorically state that Leicas are cheaper. Even at the low level I was at, the money I spent on what I considered a modest stereo would have bought a couple of M6 bodies and half a dozen current lenses. A buddy who did the hi-fi thing seriously had triple that invested.

The comparison I always think of when someone bitches about the price of Leica gear, though, is automobiles. How many of us know someone who has a little two-seater they drive just for fun in the summer? To the tune of $20,000 or more? And nobody thinks that's particularly excessive. I'd rather have $20,000 worth of Leicas, thanks.

-- Paul Chefurka (paul@chefurka.com), April 28, 2002.


try serious rally racing, it puts all your puny prices for model rail ways and the likes to shame (and is also the reason i don't do it)... the only thing that really tops car racing is either a huge yacht, or flying (which can be about the same as car racing but can also cost much more). Then again, we should count our blessings, the fact that we can even consider splurging between 5 and 10k on a camera system is something 99% of the world cannot do.

-- Matthew Geddert (geddert@yahoo.com), April 28, 2002.

Trap shooting.... A single shotgun at Purdy's in London can cost up to $50,000 and it takes about one to two years to receive after ordering....

-- Albert Knapp MD (albertknappmd@mac.com), April 28, 2002.

I took my "expensive" Leica gear to take pretty pictures of my friends 48' blue water carbon fibre racing yacht. Oh boy!

-- Tim Gee (twg@optushome.com.au), April 28, 2002.

I went with another Leica fan to a sale and display of Civil war memorabelia. Our eyes popped. $18,000 for a confederate Officer's top coat, patched at the elbows. Confederate script going at face value! or more!!! A Henry rifle for $25,000. Now, a truly trashed muzzle loading Springfield was fetching a meer $2500. My friend and I agreed that we should take our wives the next time we go to one of these so that they may appreciate how cheap and useful our Leicas are.

-- Tom Byrant (boffin@gis.net), April 28, 2002.


Hobbies cost a lot but they aren't expensive because high-end equipment can always be sold for a good portion of the original outlay and sometimes more. Clothing and furniture also cost a lot but they are very expensive because they're worth nothing the moment they leave the store. I presented my wife with that concept and in time she came to embrace it totally. Now she only buys jewelry.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 28, 2002.

Since we are talking about expensive things.... I got to fly to N.Y. city on a friend of a friends Helicopter last week. $300,000+ and $800.00 a hour to run. Just think a 50 Cron a hour. It was an experience I wont forget. Flew over some of those rich houses in New Haven CT. Securely griping my Leica:0) ----> Scott

-- Scott Evans (scottevans@attbi.com), April 28, 2002.

".....I know very well the price of brass items but also the complexity of them and the very limited number they are made for each series.."

..sounds like a camera line I know....8^)

Francois - I was serious and joking at the same time.

Snoop and other frontrangers - this was Caboose Hobbies on Broadway just north of I-25.

It's like a musuem - there are cases and cases full of train cars of all sizes - but the H0 were clearly the cream of the crop - of the less expensive ($595-$895) locomotives, there were often 10-12 identical ones together - a few painted but most of them just bare metal waiting for the brush of a hobbyist. In HO scale a safety chain across a doorway is already as fine as a thread - but these have individual LINKS within the chain, formed out of - I don't know 32 guage(?) 50 guage(?) wire.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), April 28, 2002.


I have two kids and you know they are very expensive. So daddy is going to get the latest Leica M7 which is a minor expense relative to the scheme of things. By the way I have a house full of Thomas Tank Engines and they are plastic.

-- ray tai (razerx@net;vigator.com), April 28, 2002.

Have you priced a few hours with a high class prostitute lately? You can blow the price of an M7 in an evening! No, fondling my Leica gear is cheap compared to some hobbies.

-- Johnnie Wadd (thewad@aol.com), April 28, 2002.


I bought a M6TTL for $1650 2 years ago, sold it this week for $`1350, lost $300, if you bought Krell or Levison AMP or Wilson Audio Speaker 2 years ago, you lucky you get back 40% of what you paid for originaly.

-- Mitchell Li (mitchli@pacbell.net), April 28, 2002.

Diamond and ruby Marklin engines,carbon fibre yachts, Henry rifles and Purdy shotguns, helicopters, krells, hookers... What a list!

I've heard of buyer's remorse and self-justification, but all that this establishes is that Leicas are less expensive than some of the more ostentatious self-indulgences of the rich and near-rich.

On the other hand, someone here asked about Angkor Wat in Cambodia. A guy I met in Siem Riep who runs an English language school for village kids there to give them a leg up out of poverty, told me that his annual budget (including meals) for 50 kids, was about $2000. I don't seek to twist the knife in anyone's wound, least of all my own, but let's face it, the Leica is a luxury item by the standards of any sane person.

Especially when you consider much of the photography we do with it could be done with a $400 outfit. Repent ye sinners !

:-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), April 28, 2002.


Thanks Mani. I was feeling nauseous till I got to your post... If I were a radical mollah in a Karachi madarsa, or a luminous path activist in the suburbs of Lima, I would print out the rest of the thread, and pin it to the wall. There are enough testimonies of obscene western self indulgence in here to remotivate thousands of jihad or maoist fighters !

-- Jacques (jacquesbalthazar@hotmail.com), April 29, 2002.

Albert: Expensive tools do not make the man. Rudi Etchen, arguably the greatest trapshooter who ever lived, was the first to break 100 in registered doubles in 1950 and repeated the feat 37 byears later during a practice round! His gun on both occassions was an ordinary Remington pump........

-- david kelly (dmkedit@aol.com), April 29, 2002.

oops, that's Rudy, not Rudi Etchen. Kind of like misspelling Babe Ruth!...............

-- david kelly (dmkedit@aol.com), April 29, 2002.

many years ago i was playing at my grandfathers house with his decades old märklin HO trains. he had boxes of them stashed away in his attic. i was especially impressed by a longish green train that i think was called "crocodile", all that stuff must have dated from the 50ties i guess. no plastic, solid metal. when he died two years ago i remembered them and they were gone. seemed that one of the workers who had repaired the roof a few years ago knew how much that stuff was worth. so my grandchildren in a far future will have to play with those oldfashioned unusable weird german cameras...

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), April 29, 2002.

Mani,

That is a very good point. I suggest we contribute to these countries' economies by going there, take lots of pictures, eat drink and be thankful of what we have.

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), April 29, 2002.


So who out of you Leica addicts also has expensive Hi fi of the likes of Levinson, Krell, Oracle, Audionote, Linn etc etc?

-- Karl Yik (karl.yik@dk.com), April 29, 2002.

Not bad, Andy. That's a good idea, good way to get a new body (yes, e.g. an M2 or M3 body) by telling my wife how much more expensive other things are. But she wanted to buy a new house (instead of our old appartment) so I'm afraid any price of an M6 or an HO-scale brass model engine isn't going to work ;-(

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), April 29, 2002.

Andy:

Leica had always a sales politic that I would consider as psychologic sales price. If you think of Microscpoe and other gear, they might sell a couple in a year and the price is obviously high.

With the M6 and M7, it's funny they haven't tried to improve the design (internally) to keep the same margin and reduce the prices. It's usually an industrial approach.

Thare are differences between the first M6 and the actual one (see http://cameraquest.com , interesting page on it) but the price remains very high or unchanged.

After a period where the prices have come down a little on ebay, now they have come to a stable value again. That was M6 Inc' ShareHolders POV!!!

Glad you have bought a second toy. Enjoy. cheers.

-- Xavier d'Alfort (hot_billexf@hotmail.com), May 02, 2002.


Friends,

Then there are those who restore and collect classic cars--Rolls Royces, Cords, Auburns. For a while a satisfied that fantasy with miniatures.

But photography brought stability to my life. I needed a real job to support this nasty habit.

Leicas aren't a terrible thing to toss money at. I live in Japan where frustrated office workers toss away money at Mama-san bars and on loads of cigarettes. Leicas do not, at least, give you VD, AIDS, lung cancer; neither to they pickle your liver. And think of great photos we all take.

Enjoy,

Alex

-- Alex Shishin (shishin@pp.iij4-u.or.jp), May 02, 2002.


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