Second-hand Fujifilm shortage on ebay & prices going up?

Tak K wrote:

Thanks all

Interesting... To summarise the theories:

• Shortage of supply of second-hand Fujifilm cameras? Not enough people selling cameras?
  • Fujifilm users not upgrading so second-hand cameras are not coming on the market. (I wonder what the status for other camera brands are?)
  • Prices of new cameras keep going up so people are sticking to their old ones.
  • Shortage of X100V pushing up prices of older X100-series. (But other Fujifilm cameras have also gone up in price in the past year).
• Supply and demand - I'm guessing there's no reason to suspect that demand's changed much so it's just tighter supply?

Econ 101 - less ‘askers’ and the same amount of ‘bidders’ will always drive up the price of something. Demand quite likely has changed as the retail prices for new models have been going up. This, in turn, created more demand for lower priced alternatives. The Bid/Ask nature of these used goods sites causes pricing to vary widely (why is an XF18-55 priced at $250 by one seller and $350 by another seller?) and force the buyer seeking that lens to figure out why two different sellers have two very different prices they will sell it for. That’s all it really is. Sure, the more commercial seller on these sites will always try and push price unless the product is substandard - they try and sell it to an unsuspecting buyer at a premium price….and if not achieved, they will ‘dump’ it.

I suspect it is demand that has gone up while the supply of sellers has shrunk.

• eBay crowded out by commercial sellers and fewer private sellers on eBay these days. Pricing on eBay distorted by Japanese listings. Look for second-hand cameras elsewhere.

I do hope this is just a phase and there will be plentiful supply of reasonably-priced second-hand cameras in the future. In the meantime, I'm going to try to fix my X100S and keep it going until that time. Hopefully it just needs a $10 replacement LCD screen and nothing more serious.