Is it my imagination or have enlarger prices have gone up?

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I remember 10 years ago, photographers were ditching their enlargers for ink jet printers. It seems that the price of them have gone up in the past year or two. Being a bargain hunter and a dumpster diver, I have a 45MXT that I bought for $100 with accessories and another I found for free on the curb and also with darkroom accessories.

Is silver gelatin printing is going through a renaissance?

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Where?
Where I’m nobody needs them. Our last film photography dedicated store in GTA, has them sitting unpurchased for years. Same low price.

Jim Blodgett said:

Without operating public facilities and instruction I just don't see how wet dark rooms can help but become more and more rare.

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You might be right, but I am hedging that opinion with the idea that Youtube makes many more things accessible. I made my first print in 1981. I remember it being pretty exciting. Don't discount the same excitement out there.

The only way the price of enlargers could go up is with a rise in the price of gasoline or diesel needed by a truck to pick one up for free. I was offered over twenty commercial enlargers at one time if I simply hauled them off. But all I still had room for, and all I took, was a nice Durst 10x10 color unit that originally cost around $24,000. Some of them originally cost three times as much; but I wanted something I know how to maintain myself without fancy electronics, which is always the first thing to go wrong.

DREW WILEY said:

But all I still had room for, and all I took, was a nice Durst 10x10 color unit

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So unless you can get another Durst 10x10 for free today, the price of that enlarger, at least, has gone up.

If you can find another of that quality for free, please let me know and I will give you a handsome finders fee.

All of the others went to the junkyard/dump with two exceptions, a 5x7 Durst model which has an oversized L138 lower chassis, and is stored in a commercial basement I never want to drag anything heavy out of again, and a rare autofocus Durst with special carriers which he hopes to still sell, and is asking 75K for. But there are many more enlargers I've been offered for free by completely different parties. The most interesting item was not an enlarger, but a 22ft long huge precision copy camera, which I cannibalized for the lenses and pin-registered 30x40 vac easel before the rest went to the dump. It originally cost over 200K. It could have been converted into a deluxe ULF enlarger if someone had enough space. As the big photo labs and print shops closed down, the urban properties left behind were themselves so valuable that owners and commercial redevelopers just wanted everything emptied out as fast as possible.