Buying the same cameras/lenses that you have sold before

I have done thisbefore though it usually involves lenses, not cameras.

 

It is interesting that John_Nikon_F hasn't weighed in yet on this thread....
I've sold a relatively small number of cameras and lenses. Some of them were actually traded in on new acquisitions. I haven't re-acquired anything (so far).

 

I had a Canon f1n with an assortment of lenses. Sold them all and switched to Olympus. But I always missed that f1n. Years later I bought a replacement. Olympus is still my main system, but I have the F1N, two fd lenses, a 35mm f2 and 50mm f1.4.

I also have the opposite effect with the mamiya tlr system. I keep thinking I want one. I buy one, then immediately dislike it and sell it.

 

I sold a Nikon F2 that I damaged when I dropped it. I repaired it, sold it, and replaced it with an undented F2.

I sold a Nikon EM backup body but later bought another when film camera prices dropped so low that I could not resist.



Nikon EM & F2 by Narsuitus, on Flickr

 

Yes Done this before.........

Bought a Nikkormat to get the lens (5.8cm F1.4) Sold the nikkormat.....Bought another nikkormat to get the lens (24mm F2.8) sold the nikkormat...Bought another nikkormat at "The Photo Market" no lens attached as the price was right and was very clean and worked nice....Sold Nikkormat with a crap lens for more than I paid for it !!!!

I currently have no Nikkormat....."Photo Market next Month" ....Hmm I would realy like another Nikkormat.... maybe it will have a nice lens on it....

Johnkpap

 

Only took my seeing it. ;-) Beginning in 2005, I started doing what the OP does. Stuff got affordable. Luckily, at this time, there are only two items in my arsenal that are what I call "boomerang" equipment. My F2AS that I traded away a couple times in 2012, only to get it back, and my 20/3.5 UD that I traded to a friend for an F with F-36 drive, only to have him send it back to me as a B-day gift last December. With F2 cameras, easiest way to stop the vicious cycle is to send them to Sover Wong and have him service them. Then, you have too much $ into the camera to make it worthwhile to trade away.

I'm now only doing horsetrading when I come across something that's nicer than what I own and/or at a real good deal, like the 180/2.8 ED Nikkor that I bought last weekend for $89.50, plus tax. Or, if a certain item fails, like the last FM2n I owned. Developed issues with the meter, after the repair shop that worked on it closed down. So, got rid of that and am keeping my eyes peeled for a different one. I'm also saving up for a replacement 55/1.2 for the one that got knocked off a desk onto a carpeted floor while mounted to a previous F body.

-J

 

Get one that's nice enough to keep. Then, you'll break the cycle.

-J

 

If I really like a particular camera I own, I simply don't sell it in the first place.

 

I did get another Widelux last year.....

I'm tempted to get a Canon NFD 300/2.8 again, but a EF version would be more practical. Problem is they are not cheap, and you can't get spare parts anymore....

 

10% regret, 90% laughing all the way to the bank My percentage of repurchases is probably a lot less than 10%. And more often than not I can repurchase for less.

Think of eBay as your long-term virtual storage closet where you never have to worry about stored items becoming fungused, broken, lost or stolen.

 

It's funny what John said about the Nikkormats. When I was accumulating Nikkormats and Nikomats (only the mechanical ones) I would often look for one with a cheap zoom lens attached. Somehow the cameras went for a lot less with the oddball lenses attached than they would go for alone. The difference is that I was looking for the cameras, not the lenses.

 

I have bought quite a few camera/lens combos to get either one or the other, and I agree that often one can pick up the pair for a lot less than what one may have to pay for a single item. My most recent example is a Canon rangefinder -- a IIIa. I already own a nice IIIa, so I didn't need another, but I went for it because of the lens attached -- a 35mm f/3.2 Serenar with optical rangefinder. The lens alone sells for significantly more than I paid for the outfit. In fact, I did the same thing with my original IIIa. I found it with a 50/1.8 Serenar for about what a body by itself sells for.

 

Yashica C TLR
Practica IV
Mamiya 1000 DTL
Wirgin rangefinder

All had sentimental value and I missed them after selling them.

 

Things I have sold then bought again:
- Canon EOS 30 & EOS 3: I went from a EOS 300 to a 30 to a 3 to a 1V, then sold the Canon gear, then went back to it, got a 3, then a 1N, then a 30 again. As much as I like the 3, the noise is too much and the 1-series are overkill. The 30E is actually a great little camera and very quiet.
- Canon 28/1.8 and 50/1.8II: mainly due to switching out of a Canon system then back again.
- Nikon 50/1.8D. Bought one for use with digital, didn't like it, a few years later bought another to see if works better with film. It didn't.
- Hasselblad 501CM: sold it to get a 500ELM, then the ELM died and got a 501CM.

My biggest regret (metaphorically and literally) was the Mamiya RB67 ProSD. I sold it for various reasons, I expect to buy one again later this year, just a case of finding one at the right price.

 

My only regret was selling my late Father's Exakta outfit, together with his Bolex standard-8 kit and various other photo-gear (my ex-wife had a way of saying "you won't need that" in respect of anything at all which had come from my late parents, even the furniture which they had given us as a Wedding Gift ! She'd had issues with her own parents and, for some psychological reason, didn't seem to want to accept that I, or anyone else, might have had good parents and a great childhood. Yet my parents liked her.....almost as much as she liked herself ! )

Anyway, I've toyed with the idea of buying a similar Exakta kit at some stage, though it would really just be a sentimental buy.

 

In posting what follows, I have assumed the OP referred to one's buying the same make and model of camera(s) one previously had but then sold, and not THE same camera, further down the track from having sold this camera, and (buying again) from the original buyer.

With this disclaimer, here goes my story.

Until the mid 1980s, I mostly bought one camera at a time and then sold it to buy another. A Yashica D, then a Rollei (still own it) in the '60s, Nikkormats in the '70s, more Rollei TLRs in the '80s. Then I got stuck into a fulltime career and photography suddenly became something I no longer did, not enough time/too tired/no motivation.

For about 30 years I bought excessively, made little or no use of the gear I bought (in more than one case, I did not even test the gear), held on to it for years but kept it in storage boxes, and then sold, only to buy the same all over again. Eventually this changed to just buy.

Now retired, I've considered this 'situation' at length, and I have decided my obsession with buying cameras came about as the direct result of being in my own full-time consultancy business of my own as a design architect. I disliked many of the projects I successfully bid on and had to complete,especially one office floor I entirely redid four times (for successive state governments) over 15 years including one contract in which I stripped down and again rebuilt the entire office which had never been used and had been left locked up for the entire period. When we were redoing one senior manager's office I found all the original documentation I had given the client at the closing of the previous redesign, in the boxes I had packed for the client, which had not been opened.

So I compensated by buying used camera gear (mostly off Ebay) which I never used but then put away. Psychologically I wonder if I was just replicating my frustrations with the clients by a sort of projection, by indulging in the same behavior in my own life?

After I retired in 2012 I did an extensive stocktake at home and found, among other things, 10 Nikkormat cameras in various degrees of usability, each with a 50mm lens, a great assortment of AI and AIS Nikkors, and an entire box of Nikon lens hoods, filters, cases, and assorted brand name gadjets. We won't go into the Hasselblads (one 500C, one 500CM, and THREE ELs, plus lenses, filters, hoods, finders, grips etc etc etc), nor the Rollei TLRs, which have always been my favorite cameras. Suffices to say I could have opened a well stocked secondhand camera shop, had I decided to start a new career in my sixties, but this I wisely resisted.

By then my partner was openly expressed sentiments of concern at my compulsive hoarding, and was delicately pressuring me to bite the bullet and DO SOMETHING about my camera gear hoarding. Which even I was ready to acknowledge had reached crisis proportions.

So I began downsizing and offloading. Now, almost five years later, I'm down to a reasonable collection of cameras and accessories I plan to use (at least one time) before I pass them on to new owners. All the Hasselblads have gone, also a few of the Nikkormats, almost all my saleable MF cameras, my two Fuji GA645s, and two of the Rolleis.

I shudder to think of the financial loss I incurred from all this impulsive buying. The Nikkormats cost me A$150-$180 each, as I acquired most of them at a time when they were in demand. The same cameras now fetch about $50-$60 on Ebay and with luck, a little more from private sales. Flogging off the 50mm lenses separately has cut my losses a little. A few lenses, like the mint 300 and the never used 80-200 AIS still in its original box with all its papers and even the original sale receipt, will bring in some extra money when I finally decide to part with them. The goal in all this sacrifice, or so I keep reminding myself, is to downsize, not to realise big profits.

It gave me new hope when I learned that modern Nikon D lenses, also E series lenses, can be used on Nikkormats. This means I can use all the D lenses I've accumulated - I won't say any more.

The upside in all this, of course, is the great pleasure I have had over the years in using some of this gear, and the future plans I have to eventually shoot off and process all the B&W and color films in my darkroom fridge and small freezer.

I realise all this may present me as somewhat of an extreme case, but some of it has been a pleasant way to help pass a lifetime, even if now at my age, lugging a 300mm (with a tripod) on a mountain trek in Tamania is more an ordeal than a pleasure.

All this to say, read and be warned. It is an easy trap to fall into, and many of us do.

 

Wow... I can definitely relate to that!!

 

My wife has been very supportive of my photographic acquisitions. She does, however, wish that they didn't take up quite as much space though.

 

Nikon 35mm f/2D - bought for F100 in 2006 then sold both, bought for D700 in 2010 then sold both, now I have an F5 and am thinking about buying it again.

Bought and sold Pentax 6x7 and later 67II. I sold 67II and a 75mm f/2.8 AL for about CAD$1000 each about 3 years ago and now I can't find them for close to that! Miss that camera for sure.

 

Just tell her to be glad its easily stored cameras not cars

 

Hehe, great point. It's my wife's purse addiction that is the reason why she doesn't give my any lip about my camera gear. She's especially fond of Brahmin. Priced a Brahmin purse lately? Hooboy.

 

YES, dumb move. I sold my two Rolleiflexes when I thought digital photography was convenient and perfect, and all that other doo-doo that the technotypes like. I kept a Fuji GW690II and occasionally shot medium format film. But I really missed the square frame and the Rollei experience, so I bought a clean 3.5E last year. Surprisingly, this 3.5 Xenotar is better then the 3.5 Xenotar and 3.5 Planar in my previous bodies. I can't explain why. Below is an example of Wagner's Grocery in Church Hill, Mississippi, taken on long-expired Ektar 25 . The color is off but not too bad. I found that Ektar 25 was always a bit tricky to use.