This is one of the odd features of buying old stuff on the used market: sometimes things become expensive because they're cheap.
Let me 'splain. Sometimes things are great bargains on the used market. They become popular and sought after because they're great bargains. Influencers recommend them as good bargains, and the echo chamber parrots the recommendations until it's common knowledge. People follow along, and seek these bargains out. And then, with market forces working in their usual way, competition for these great bargains...drives the prices up. So then people find themselves competing to pay a lot for something that, originally, everyone wanted because it was cheap.
Weird.
Here's a similar thing. There was a CD/SACD player, I seem to recall, that sold by the bushel because it was good and also very cheap. But then what could the company do as a follow-up to its success but produce a more deluxe, expensive player? At which point people were saying, wait, I only wanted one of those in the first place because they were cheap; why would I want "the same thing only better" if it's also more expensive? (The company went out of business. No room to move, I guess.)
Sometimes companies do such a good job of branding themselves in their chosen niches that they have trouble moving out of them. Volkswagen once tried to create a luxury car to compete with Mercedes-Benz, and from what I hear it did a good job—the car was called the Phaeton, an old word once applied to certain kinds of horse-drawn carriages. (Before that, it was the name of the ne'er-do-well offspring of a water nymph and the sun god, who was given the keys to the family car and drove the chariot of the sun off course, scorching Earth. Maybe Phaeton's driving that chariot again now, who knows.) VW evidently failed to consider why anyone buying a high-prestige car would want one with an "everyman" nameplate. Kia ran into the same problem with its K9, a car that tried to hide its doggy associations by having its name disguised as the K900 in the US. (No one was fooled. I like dogs, so I would have preferred the straight-up "K9." I'm usually in the minority about things like this.) It's apparently a nice luxury car. But one little problem: it's a Kia.
Sometimes there's a more basic, stripped-down version of a desirable product that's sold as a "good enough" budget version for students or beginners. "Entry level," they're sometimes called. Fewer of such budget models sell, so that, later, when neither version is made any more and perhaps the company is out of business altogether, the budget version is scarcer. And scarcity drives the price up.
An example of this is the Bronica SQ-B medium format film camera. The "B" was for "basic." It was originally an entry-level, less fully-featured variant of the SQ-Ai aimed at students and newcomers to medium format, sold as a kit. Well, now they're more rare, so they go for higher prices than the SQ-Ai.
All versions of the Leica R4 are cheap now, but when people still wanted them, the simpler, stripped-down R4s, originally prized because it was more accessible to people who had less money, actually became more desirable than the fully featured R4. The value-to-price equation flipped upside down.
Related to this is the upside-down valuation of some collectibles. Imagine a book author. Her first book sells poorly because it isn't very good. Later she hits her stride, writes masterpieces, and becomes famous. Enthusiasts collect her works. The problem then becomes that a collection can only be complete it if includes all her books, including her first, unpopular one—which are scarce because nobody bought them when they were new. But there are lots of collectors, and now all those collectors need that first book. Again, scarcity in the face of demand drives up the price, until that author's worst book is selling for ten times the price of any of her other books.
That's the reason why some early Japanese Leica copies—originally cheaper knock-offs—sell for more than the real Leicas they copied.
And then there's the "latest is best" phenomenon. A product is introduced, achieves success, runs its course, and is superseded. Eventually, all of the models of a given line or product type become outmoded and old. But then the used market still prefers the latest version because it's assumed to be "the best." It had the latest revisions, right? And the last models remain the newest. I haven't checked lately, but for a long time you had to pay more for a Leica IIIg because it was the last Leica screwmount camera.
But c'mon, it's a screwmount camera. They're all ancient now. The IIIg was discontinued the year John F. Kennedy was elected President. Does it really matter if something is 60 years old vs., say, 68 years old? But "latest-is-best" seems to survive in peoples' minds even as time goes on.
Still, of all these little weirdnesses, and others like 'em, "expensive-because-it-was-cheap" seems the strangest.
So when you encounter something in the used market that seems to be popular and selling for high prices, don't just assume that it has to be good because the price is high and/or it's in demand. You also need to do enough due diligence to figure out why the price is high and why it's in demand. It might be for some reason other than what you assume.
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
hugh crawford: "OK here is an example.
"In 1955, '56, and '57, Porsche decided that they needed to sell a low-end car. Cheap paint, no side windows, no carpets, cheap seats, a joke of a roof that was a collection of sticks and a tent to go over it, optional hubcaps, even a cardboard interior I think. They called it the Speedster. They also sold a Coupe with lux everything. Fancy adjustable seats made of leather stuffed with horsehair, wool carpet, glass windows, chrome bumpers and hubcaps. Every attempt to make it look expensive and a list of options that goes on and on.
"Here is a comparison of the prices when new and what they sell for now. Note that the Coupe is listed with no options which is sort of a joke because I have never ever seen one with no options, and the Speedster was not offered with any options.
1957 Porsche Speedster
Original MSRP $3,215
Low Retail $179,600
Average Retail $255,000
High Retail $439,800
1957 Porsche Coupe
Original MSRP $3,665
Low Retail $58,500
Average Retail $95,600
High Retail $151,200
"As you can see the cheap one was the one to buy. Even today collectors are wary of no-sunroof 911's from the '60s and '70s because they are worth enough more that people have the sunroof welded shut when they restore them.
"P.S. I often am astonished at the Pentax K1000 selling at higher prices than the much much nicer K2."
Crabby Umbo: "I'm with Hugh! As a Pentax 'fan,' I'm amazed how a camera as rough and clunky as the K1000 costs more than the more refined KM and K2. Sure, I get that it was the camera of choice for people in college learning photography, but that means there are zillions of them out there! I have a few, but I got them cheap/free. I've always maintained that if you had a SP500 (which I see all the time on eBay for 50 bucks in mint shape) or other Spotmatic, you pick up a K1000 and say: 'what happened?' I.e., the Spotty's being butter smooth and the K1000 being loud and clunky. The 'now cheaper' KM has a shutter closer to the old Spotmatics, hence much smoother, it seems. Go figure...."
Robert B: "Anecdotal saying about the Phaeton here in Germany was that it was constructed around a perfect air-conditioning system because one of the owners of VW, Ferdinand Piëch, late offspring of the famous Porsche family, was extremely shy of cold air drafting over his bald head. Seemed to be a bad selling story for a Veblen good. But I know some professional drivers who loved that car especially for long distance rides, not least because of its comfortable, electrically driven massage seats...."
hugh crawford: "More about that VW Phaeton.
"Ferdinand Piëch was chairman of the executive board of Volkswagen Group in 1993–2002. He was also the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. And before he was kicked out of Porsche by his cousin (you could write a book. Several have already been written), designed the 917 among other things.
"He wanted to build a really nice car that was better than Bentley, which VW owned. The Phaeton is basically a Bentley Flying Spur, built on the same production line, with a nicer interior. The air conditioning vents disappear behind the wood in the VW when not in use. Not particularly utilitarian, but it shows how determined they were to make the interior not look like a pinball machine.
[Comparison of Bentley Flying Spur and VW Phaeton]
"Mr. Piëch generally got what he wanted. He had 12 children including two with his cousin's ex-wife, which gave him more shares in Porsche than the cousin that kicked him out. Then he married the nanny.
["The Porsche Story: A Fierce Family Feud" from Der Spiegel]
"He was also responsible for the Bugatti Veyron. But the Phaeton was the real poke in the eye to the rest of the automobile world. Because it was a VW, not a Bentley, Lamborghini, Audi, or Bugatti.
"I met him once. Scary guy."
