Anybody having trouble getting near-your-asking-price for used gear ? (Plz. no hype)
I buy and sell gear "on a whim" and have done so for 40 years. Mostly high-end tube stuff that I get an itch to move from my rig to make room for other high-end stuff that I have been dreaming of. It's fun and gives me a fresh faces to fall in and out of love with.
Lately I am having a really hard time getting any serious offers above 1/4 to 1/3 of retail- actually zero offers over that. And winter is the time of year gear sells. Once the sun comes out things get really quiet. Not terribly long ago I could ask 50% of retail and get serious offers pretty close to the ask.
I am especially having trouble selling ARC gear. It's prices are steadily collapsing. On HiFi Shark that stuff sits for close to a year (or more) before it moves. For example SP 15s are under 2K now. They were selling (not asking) at 3K a year ago. It took me almost a year to sell a new-in--box I/50 for $3000 (!) Ref 75s are moving under $3000 and TMR will only offer 2K for one of them. The older stuff is selling in the hundreds not the thousands. Top-Of the-line stuff like Reference 10 preamps are moving under 12K (asking is around 17K)
I recently sold a Bryston BR-20 brand new in the box and it took me 7 months to get 48% of MSRP. This is NEW stuff- not somebody's junk.
My guy at Magnepan told me their stuff is really moving slowly as well. He blamed it on the political environment. ARC is pretending all is well but I have a little birdie inside there that tells me their stuff is stagnant as and dealers are actually cancelling orders.
Now, assuming you are being honest and not "fluffing the market" with bullbleep because you have something for sale and hoping for the greater fool, are you seeing/experiencing the same thing I am experiencing?
NO RETAILERS PLESASE- you guys tend to "exaggerate" to put it kindly- plus most of us here at AG know who you are and your 1000s of posts are a big clue.
Signed/ Depressed about my favorite side gig.
One great thing about Google is how it dredges up ads for long-since-sold gear. Not infrequently, you see circa-2000 gear commanding less money in 2010 (when it was 10 years old) than the ask today, at 25 years old, in 2025. Is it possible that the current market trend is simply a reversal to the mean?
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Realistically, your $50k retail speakers are worth $25k the minute the delivery guys pack up and leave. By the time you’re in the mood to sell them, you’re looking at maybe $12k. Not many used floorstanders transact anywhere near 50% of their retail value. Maybe Revel Salon 2s and a few others. |
Well... today we call beauty pageants monsters, so, same words, different order 😂 Seriously, the negative reactions to tariff posts may owe more to boredom and weariness than anything else.
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Honestly I am equally sick of right wing and left wing posts. Believe me I am not one to shy away from discussing politics, but this is not the appropriate forum All it does is get otherwise good informative threads deleted by moderators, and honestly I can't blame them. For what it's worth @grislybutter I always appreciate your non-political posts :)
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