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Old July 3rd 04, 05:38 PM
Mike Henley
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Default What will happen to classic film cameras?

Do you anticipate they'll increase depreciate or increase in value in
years to come?

It's understandable that their prices have dropped significantly
lately as everyone's been riding on the digital wave, but regarding
the future...

Possibility A) they could increase in value

Rationale

- less will be made
- those that will be made will either be one of two... A) modern, and
those who like modern stuff will likely go digital. So, the more
likely is B) retro, and those will be too expensive as they're harder
to make at a low price (eg nikon's mechanical rangefinder)
- there's a current wave of everyone (mass public) converting to
digital; digital is still expensive and not good enough yet (actually,
most 5mp cameras are good enough for public right now; the resolution
of a 6mp i read about today was described as an "overkill" by the
reviewer), but sooner or lately digital will get there both in being
cheap and being good-enough, and the current stock of film cameras in
non-collector hands will slowly disappear, lost, trashed, etc, which
means that there'll be less of them, especially when...
- there'll be a point in not too long where most film cameras will be
traded by either niche (film) shooters or collectors. I have seen
quite a few classic cameras lately whose sellers on ebay said that
they only found out how highly regarded and sought after they are when
they did a search for info about them to fill in the ebay description,
so i'll hypothesize that there'll be many "babies" will be gone (like
for example the three olympus RCs I've seen lately which sellers told
me they had no idea they were classic - i can only assume some won't
make it to ebay)
- can they depreciate any more than they are right now? I would've
thought digital cameras are somewhat stabilizing, there's already far
more digital cameras on sale on ebay than film ones

OR They will depreciate

- i can't make up a rationale for this one as i find the above likely
more persuasive, can you?