FYI this Japanese-based outfit buys up lots and lots of classic camera
equipment on eBay from USA sellers for sale in Japan:
http://www.sekaimon.com/trackingno/html/about_us.html
If you do a search using eBay's "advanced Search" feature for items bid on by those
eBay IDs given in the above link you will see a huge amount of merchandise that is
being bought. Much of it is
not photo gear but lots and lots of it is.
There are also other similar companies doing the same thing.
It reminds me of what happened to the classic sports cars of the 1950s-60s-70s
which used to be so common here in California but are now extremely scarce. Many
were bought up by European and other foreign companies and shipped overseas.
Especially the California cars due to their relative lack of rust.