What is going on with antique stores?

If an item consistently sells on ebay for let's say $100.00 US, why should a shop, be it an antique shop, flea market or camera shop put it on their shelf for $25.00? Certainly, there is a lot more to it, than just what's written on the price tag. Sellers vary in their interest and ability to ID and prep what they put up for sale.
IME, there are occasional bargains to be had, and occasional finds of special stuff at better than competitive prices, along with stuff at wacky prices, high and low that leave you scratching your head.
What I've seen lately is that cameras of all sorts seem to be disappearing, it used to be common to see 3 or 4 Kodak folders along with various 35mm SLRs or an occasional big camera, but in the last 6 months or so they've disappeared, and spotting even a Brownie is unusual.

My coolest antique store find was a roll film holder, new in its box, for a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Graflex for $20.00, it so happens, that I already had a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Speed Graphic sitting filmless on my shelf.

Merchandising and pricing for used goods is a bit of an art, and knowing their local market is critical to success.

Often people who are serious about something like photography are not an antique store's market, and many such stores really stay in business thanks to locals who "Have more money than sense..."

Your average antique store probably isn't trying to sell a working camera to a photographer who plans to use it, but rather they're selling a "Piece of art" to someone who wants something interesting to sit on a shelf. And unless they can get a piece for an absolute steal for themselves, it rarely makes sense to price it even remotely competitively for the used camera market. Instead it gets used as a draw piece or shelf-filler to bring attention to the shop, [who wants to shop somewhere half empty and without any interesting items on the shelf?] until it can be sold at an inflated value to 'that one right customer who needs it now, because they like the look of it'.

Ariston said:

Let me know if you want to get rid of that useless old XA!

Click to expand...

Oh, I like the XA just fine but the Bellami is faster to use with its zone focusing.

Chan Tran said:

Because to be an antique it has to be at least 100 year old.

Click to expand...

Over here that regulation is not strictly applied, rather that an antique shop has the better old goods, in contrast to a thrift store.

Chan Tran said:

Because to be an antique it has to be at least 100 year old.

Click to expand...

1. The age definition of antique depends on the type of object (motor cars, music, manuscripts, furniture, glassware) and depends on the country. You know this.
2. Antique stores sell all sorts of objects and bric a brac of all ages.

Antique pricing on cameras and such is usually pretty fair around here. The selection isn't great, and the condition among the selection is usually pretty poor. But the prices usually aren't too bad, assuming you're willing to do the work to fix and clean it up. At least at the antique stores I visit. There are a few others that charge ridiculous prices, but I never go in them anymore.

I don't know if it's just that I know the market so well, or that OKC and Tulsa are just really cheap places to buy antiques. Either way, them I spend a lot of time at them and thrift stores (which only sell point and shoots in their stores anymore, and sell their fancier cameras online now).

I suspect some stores are using eBay "Buy It Now" prices as a basis for their pricing.

The problems with this are:
1) A lot of "Buy It Now" items rarely sell for the listed price
2) eBay sells to a worldwide market and hence has greater demand than a local shop that may only rarely encounter a photographer looking for working gems.

Flea markets, Craigslist, For Sale/Trader Post type newspapers, asking friends and family to put out the word... there are many routes to inexpensive cameras...

Just asking the extended family if they have any old film cameras they would like to get rid of often brings surprising results.

Ask Grandpa or Grandma to check with their friends.

bdial said:

If an item consistently sells on ebay for let's say $100.00 US, why should a shop, be it an antique shop, flea market or camera shop put it on their shelf for $25.00?

Click to expand...

Because doing successful business with cameras on Ebay means taking various photos, making a descriptions, having shipping hassle.
Thus troublefree as-is $25 over the counter does not seem bad. Otherwise there would not be fleamarkets, thrift stores etc.
I know even dedicated camera stores that only sell local, and thus have to deal with the local price level.

Kino said:

Flea markets, Craigslist, For Sale/Trader Post type newspapers, asking friends and family to put out the word... there are many routes to inexpensive cameras...

Just asking the extended family if they have any old film cameras they would like to get rid of often brings surprising results.

Ask Grandpa or Grandma to check with their friends.

Click to expand...

Around here, craigslist sellers ask at least twice the "buy it now" prices on ebay. I kid you not.

Ariston said:

Around here, craigslist sellers ask at least twice the "buy it now" prices on ebay. I kid you not.

Click to expand...

I'll pay a slight premium on gear I can look over in person before committing to buying, just to save the hassle of dealing with fraud/shipping/breakage/etc, but doubling a price sounds a tad excessive.

Garage or estate sales any better for even finding cameras?

i think its called capitalism
probably someone will buy it thinking they got a bargain via nostalgia
... ( oh look at this vintage camera, didn't uncle jim or grandpa have something like this, we should get it ! )

Chan Tran said:

Because to be an antique it has to be at least 100 year old.

Click to expand...

i think sometimes it's 25 years other times its 50 ... its not a steadfast rule i don' t think.
i have seen people with "antique plates" on their car, usually a cheesy 1990s ford escort.

jnantz said:

i think its called capitalism
probably someone will buy it thinking they got a bargain ...

Click to expand...

Even though I am retired, my time is still worth something to me. I look at KEH, Photrio Classifieds, Large Format Photography Classifieds, B&H, ... and find what I am looking for faster and in better condition.

Sirius Glass said:

Even though I am retired, my time is still worth something to me. I look at KEH, Photrio Classifieds, Large Format Photography Classifieds, B&H, ... and find what I am looking for faster and in better condition.

Click to expand...

sure, but you are not buying an antique camera to be used as a conversation piece and an object in a curio cabinet.
there is a big difference between someone buying a camera to be used as a camera or who is a photographer and knows sources to buy used vintage camera gear and someone buying a camera that looks like grandpa's from word war 2. they will be used for different reasons.
just like the camera that is converted to a room light on etsy. you might use it( the same make and model bought at keh for 30bucks ) as a camera, someone else might use it as a light purchsed for 15$. tjmaxx used to sell ULF cameras on tripods for 70$ that were used as decorations.

Theo Sulphate said:

Garage or estate sales any better for even finding cameras?

Click to expand...

Long time my main source. But it depends what you are looking for.
At such places you will encounter consumer cameras, and then practically only those that once were sold locally, hardly ever anything professional.

I can’t remember ever seeing a working camera in an antique store, but they have always been priced even above one in mint condition. The only exceptions are broken 110 and disk cameras.

Sirius Glass said:

I gave up pawn shops, thrift shops, and antique shops in the southern California area because they know how to check the current prices and charge more.

Click to expand...

I think this comes close to describing what some of us are seeing these days.
Along the same lines, I think we've entered an era in which the wider population has at least some awareness that "film is cool again" and this is a period of renewed interest in the medium, and it follows that prices of good/usable equipment is going up. Coupled with the fact that as time passes, there is going to be less and less high quality used equipment coming into the marketplace, its hardly surprising that prices are rising. None of this surprises me.

Once upon a time one of the local thrift stores used to have a cabinet full of analog photo equipment, but now there is almost never anything in that case (photo-wise) except accessories (sets of close-up filters, garbagey tripods, cheap flashes). I spoke with the person who sorts and prices the photo stuff they get and I was told they send "the good stuff" to their eBay page. Only one data point, admittedly, but its a factual data point.

I have a few working ones that came from antique shops or venues, an F5 and an F100, plus a Mamiya 6 folder, which was working at the time I bought it, but has developed shutter issues since. For the F5 and F100, I just need more time to use them.

paulbarden said:

Once upon a time one of the local thrift stores used to have a cabinet full of analog photo equipment, but now there is almost never anything in that case (photo-wise) except accessories (sets of close-up filters, garbagey tripods, cheap flashes). I spoke with the person who sorts and prices the photo stuff they get and I was told they send "the good stuff" to their eBay page. Only one data point, admittedly, but its a factual data point.

Click to expand...

Here’s data point #2

Ebay pricing is driven by demand. There is indeed a trendy new market for 'cool' old tech, but it seems to be mostly about appearance. I was recently visiting family in Los Angeles, carrying my Olympus Pen-S, and got several approving comments from youngsters. However, they didn't seem at all interested in how the camera worked or what kind of film I was using. They just liked the way it looked.

Then there's the matter of supply. Aside from old dad's photo junk getting tossed directly into the dumpster when he's put into the nursing home, it's folks like us who have already snarfed up most of the old machinery. How many of us now own dozens or even hundreds of cameras and lenses, when in our youth we might have felt fortunate to have just one of each?

Then again, it's just the natural progression of time. For most of us here, the equipment we admire and collect is a product of the receding technological era into which we were born and with which we still identify. Aside from Leicas and a few Nikons, fully mechanical cameras started to fade away in the 1970's and film cameras in the early 2000's... which is to say 20-45 years ago. Nothing mechanical works forever without maintenance or repair and skilled technicians and parts are increasingly rare. How many interesting shelf queens, paper weights or doorstops does one really need?

If film photography is to continue into the distant future, at some point we will need to have new high-quality cameras on the market that don't cost many thousands of dollars. Lomos and Holgas will not be sufficient.

Lee Rust said:

How many of us now own dozens or even hundreds of cameras and lenses, when in our youth we might have felt fortunate to have just one of each?

Click to expand...

Spot on, Lee! I remember as a youth buying a copy of Popular Photography each month and wearing the ink off the pages, flipping back and forth through the ads, building phantom camera systems, pricing them and comparing the "value" of each based on reviews. When these cameras lost all their value in the late 1990's, I started testing my theories by buying as many of them I could to satisfy my curiosity and I don't regret it in the least...

Lee Rust said:

If film photography is to continue into the distant future, at some point we will need to have new high-quality cameras on the market that don't cost many thousands of dollars. Lomos and Holgas will not be sufficient.

Click to expand...

Agreed, but therein lies the rub; would a truly mechanical camera stand a chance in the market? Could a World-Class film camera be built for a price that would be reasonable? I have my doubts.

Can you imagine what a Nikon F or even a Minolta SRT series camera would cost if built today? $10K for a body? $1K for a lens?

How many people would be satisfied with a totally mechanical camera? Very few, I'll bet.

There's a whole lot of unknowns and a lot of risk in making film cameras in such a market as mercurial as today.

Kino said:

Can you imagine what a Nikon F or even a Minolta SRT series camera would cost if built today? $10K for a body? $1K for a lens?

Click to expand...

A new Leica 35mm camera is about $5000, and that's a Leica, so there's no way a Nikon F or Minolta SRT would cost $10,000 today. As for lenses, well most new lenses for modern cameras cost at least $1000.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

A new Leica 35mm camera is about $5000, and that's a Leica, so there's no way a Nikon F or Minolta SRT would cost $10,000 today. As for lenses, well most new lenses for modern cameras cost at least $1000.

Click to expand...

I was thinking of the cost of re-tooling a production line from the ground-up and all the costs involved.

If you could use an existing production line (how many of them are there?) it would indeed lower the cost...

Who still manufactures film camera bodies?

Nikon, Leica... Cosina? Do they still make cameras?

I think Nikon and Leica are the only "big names" still making 35mm film cameras, then there is Lomo.
The F6 is about 2500, that's probably inline with historic differences in price between Nikon's top end and Leica.