Second hand SL

[BernardLanguillier]

I found out yesterday that a major second hand store in Tokyo (mapcamera) had 18 (one height) mint second hand Leica SL bodies available for immediate purchase...

I personally find that mind boggling because Leica cannot have sold thousands of SL in Tokyo...

Cheers,
Bernard

[JV]

Normally you are lucky if you can find one in a store... at least in the US...

Leica Store Miami occasionally has one (currently none) but rarely more than one... 18 seems a lot...

[BernardLanguillier]

There are also several at yahoo auction from private sellers.

The SL doesn't seem to please Japanese owners.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Are you sure Leica is spelled correctly? Not "Lieca?"   

[Manoli]

I found out yesterday that a major second hand store in Tokyo (mapcamera) had 18 (one height) mint second hand Leica SL bodies available for immediate purchase...

And the asking price is ?

[BernardLanguillier]

And the asking price is ?

https://search.mapcamera.com/?keyword=leica%20SL&sort=keyword

Between 698,000 and 758,000 Yen. I had missed the second page... they have in fact 23 of them. To be compared to a new price of 940,000 Yen, which is nearly 20% more than the price in the US. Leica is with P1 the company taking the largest price overhead in Japan compared to the US prices.

The ones on Yahoo auction from private sellers are typically around 50,000 Yen less: http://auctions.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?auccat=&p=leica+SL&tab_ex=commerce&ei=utf-8

They have also 17 copies of the 24-90mm...

Cheers,
Bernard

[Manoli]

Bernard,

At the current exchange rates (1.3 US$/GBP and 101 Yen/$) 758,000Y for the SL is 10% more expensive than the UK cost NEW(£5,300, £4,400 excluding tax)! So I'm not too surprised that they're not 'flying off the shelves'. In today's market even mint, out-of-box Leicas aren't part-exchanged by dealers for more than 50-55% of the cost new. Cash buy-in would be even less. The 20% discount on the new px makes them expensive, both in absolute and relative terms, IMO.

Thanks for the info.

Best,
M

[BernardLanguillier]

My point wasn't really that nobody buys them, more that many people sold them...

Considering how few they must have sold total, this means that a pretty high percentage of buyers sold them back pretty quickly after having bought them.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Paulo Bizarro]

Rich people who get bored real quick:)

[BernardLanguillier]

Rich people who get bored real quick:)

Cheers,
Bernard

[JV]

Bernard,

There must be something else going on here, 23 bodies and 17 lenses is too high of a number to have been sold by individual owners IMHO.

Joris.

[E.J. Peiker]

People that pre-ordered an X1D believing that they would actually get one in late September... 

[BernardLanguillier]

There must be something else going on here, 23 bodies and 17 lenses is too high of a number to have been sold by individual owners IMHO.

Yes, that could be, but no idea what that is.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BAB]

I just returned from Hong Kong there you will find an abundance of SL cameras and lenses, in fact in one mall there are three stores with in 50 ft that carry Leica including a Leica boutique as one of them.
I was not looking for used but the Leica inventory I glanced at was staggering in poprtion to what you see else where. At the store in the airport the barely had anything!

[JV]

Not too many comments on the Leica Forum but Post #7 (last one at time of writing) probably makes sense:
http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/264835-second-hand-sl-bodies-in-japanese-stores/