Phillip,
Whoever said that passionate collectors were rational? Some persons with
relatively unlimited funds will pay almost any price to complete
collections. Especially for VERY hard-to-find items like this hood. I,
like many, believe that there are some shenanigans going on with this
particular item, given the bidding history. But that doesn't diminish the
fact that some were willing to pay $500-600+ for the hood, which sounds
ludicrous to me, much less $5,000+.
You only have to look at the history of collectors paying $40-60 million
for paintings and $2-3 million for JFK memorabilia to understand this. I
live in the NYC area and there are some pretty sick puppies around here
that would think nothing of paying $5,000 for an item that they REALLY
wanted. It's almost pocket change. Look at the prices paid for designer
dresses and unique jewelry items. $25,000 for a dress?! $1.5 million for
a necklace?! You have to put it in perspective. If I got $1 million ++
bonuses every year, I'd certainly indulge myself somewhere. And if it was
that hood to complete my 21mm Nikon RF lens, what the hell, I'd do
it. It's only money.
Now back to reality as I work on my monthly bills. Lets' see . . . how am
I going to pay THAT bill this month?
Skip
At 3/22/00 03:48 AM -0800, you wrote:
I think I could understand the need to preserve the historical artifacts
of the human experience. But IMO a Nikon lens hood hardly qualifies as
a significant piece of historic importance. It's just a circular piece
of cut and pressed metal. Any good metal worker in Tijuana would make
an identical duplicate of that Nikon hood. It would probably cost about
50 cents to produce them in mass. I could imagine that state of the art
German metal workers working with state of the art equipment could
produce the finest lens hood ever made out of some of the the most
exotic metal of our time. Even this one-off made by a master artisan
would not yield a value of anywhere close to $5,500. Like I said
before, there is something that just does not make sense about that lens
hood. I've seen Rollei and Leica collectors with some serious wealth
pay some hefty prices for a significant piece of equipment. But never
anything like this. This hood is just an example of either a phony bid
or someone who has just lost his/her mind. I've had an opportunity of
visiting many museums in my time and have never seen something as basic
as a lens hood on a pedestal behind the velvet ropes ... or in this case
encased in bullet proof glass. Think about it. A lens hood on loan from
the Rochester Institute being displayed at the Getty for a limited time
only in a collection of post modern significant lens hoods. Give me a
break! Next we will have appraisers and experts looking for the fake
Nikon lens hoods.
Phillip Franklin
-----------------------------------------------
Skip Williams
Westfield, NJ
skipwilliams@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.skipwilliams.com
-----------------------------------------------
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|