"Is it my imagination, or have prices of used OM equipment been falling in the
last year or two? More so perhaps for the less expensive and less desirable end
(eg, off-brand lenses, lower end camera bodies like double digit OM's), than
for higher end items which (will always?) seem to hold their value better...?"
I buy a lot of stuff on eBay, and there's no question bids fluctuate. An item
will go for a high price one week, while the same item in the same condition
goes for much less the next. (Once I learned this, I got better at spotting and
grabbing bargains.)
The obvious reason is that there is a finite number of people looking for any
particular item, and which of those people happen to be looking on eBay at any
time shows the normal statistical fluctuation -- lots of them one week (driving
the bids up), few the next (keeping the bids low).
It's also true that in any group of bidders, there are probably one or two who
are willing to bid substantially more than the others. Once they've gotten what
the want, they're "out of the pool," and subsequent auctions for the same item
don't educe similarly high bids.
But these observations, valid or not, don't directly address the question of an
overall decline in prices. My (completely unsupported) opinion is that the
number of people using eBay (or similar venues) is not rising as fast as it
once was. People who collect photographic & electronic equipment are often
"techies" who adopt new technologies early. As a result, most of the collectors
who would use eBay are already on eBay. As desirable items appear and are
snapped up, the demand for "more of the same" declines, because there aren't
many new buyers interested in them.
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