Getting a little concerned with prices ..

[Elton]

Lesser equipped detectors are starting to hit 200 to 300 dollar range or more in todays market.

Mid priced detectors are now getting to be 899 to 1100 price range..

High enders are now $1,499 to $2,500.00 hundred or more...................

Pin pointers are not far off of $200 dollars or some even higher.....

coils..well just check out the price of new coils whew some $249 or more..........

Resale has plummeted.... No one wants to pay the value of a used detector... No one really wants to pay shipping when they buy used..another getting out of line price point...

No one wants to pay a fair value for a used coil.. My concern is that the only people taking the hit is the consumer........ Expect a huge loss if you sell a used detector, or coil(s)


I will myself be very careful what I buy in the near future..Will be more inclined to hold onto what I buy..and buy much less product than I have in the past due to the higher prices.

Keeping the answer realistic..No bashsing anyone, or any company let me know your thoughts on the above concern.. Or if it is just me..shoot let me know that too... Maybe I'm getting older and out of touch ..

 

[Southwind]

Inflation. Nothing outrageous that I've seen. Heck, when I started detecting a to of the line was $400-$500 and many thought that was ridiculous.

There will always be that one you wish you could afford. I dream of owning a 1000 horse power mustang but my pocketbook says 400 HP is my limit LOL.

 

[mudpuppy]

Your right, Elton... a sign of the times.. Devaluation/Inflation and all, price of everything new is going up, while income is going down... the 'Great Wring out of Wealth' is upon us....the average joe aint got any disposable cash... but plenty have credit to quickly and easily buy new...plus, we 'hobbiests' are a pretty small market in the scheme of things..a dollar just dont buy what it used to just a few years ago...yet it takes a lot more effort to make one.
If a guy has cash in hand, he can offer and get a heck of a deal on used anythings....if not, whip out the CC and do an impulse buy on new...I've got no answers...just observations, trying to get through this mess the best I can along with everybody else..
Mud

 

[Larry (IL)]

I think it is just part of the ageing process Elton.

I bet you remember when gum or a candy bar was 5 cents, a bottle of soda was a dime, a college education was $5,000, most new cars were less than $3,000, a new house for $20,000, gas for 30 cents a gallon and less when they had a gas war, I remember gas for 19 cents. Milk was 49 cents a gallon, 10 cent cup of coffee with free refills and postage was 4 cents.

The list can go on forever but I think you see the point, everything is more expensive.

 

[mudpuppy]

I dont know Larry..maybe it is? Nowadays Folks think its good money to be making 10 bucks per hour...back in the 70's that same fellow was making over 20 in a mfg job...and that was when everything was 4X cheaper...from a linear perspective, a man trying to raise a family nowadays better be pulling down 40 bucks per, know of anybody knocking down that?...at 20 bucks per/hr on a year is @ 40k...after taxes and travel, a guy might be bringing home 25k more than likely less... and I bet you would have a hard time finding somebody that is knocking down 20bucks per......its the damndest thing..
Mud

 

[Southwind]

Here is something I've noticed. Although most people complain that these are tough times and all I see more people able to afford the finer things in life than I have in the past. I see you average Joe next door with 2 nice vehicles and a boat, I see not old people living in the nicer houses in town but younger couples. Yes there is still those I see struggling, but I'm seeing a lot of people doing very well for themselves.

Not so long ago spending $2,000 for a new detector would have been thought ludicrous but today there are a lot of people who own them.

 

[Larry (IL)]

Location probably has a lot to do with it too Mud. Some manufacturing plants around here pays 80 to $100,000/yr or more. Places like Detriot I'm sure are a lot less.

 

[Elton]

Some of those prices were before my time.. some were fairly close ..The milk..the gas in the 40 something range.. That said I still will watch what I pay for a detector..and will watch the resale prices too..

I wouldn't mind the prices..but I sure do feel the effect of the resale ..Man that is killing me lately zooooooooooooooooom they go down..way down.............

 

[bootyhoundpa]

I have followed the classified adds for years and have definitely noticed used detectors taking much longer to sell than in previous years and usually after several price reductions... use to be if a good quality unit came up for sale at a resonable price it was almost always sold within 1 or 2 days often with several people behind the 1st responder offering to purchase if deal falls thru with 1st responder... I use to notice a few regular buyers of the good deal detectors...those guys dont seem to be buying anymore..as a matter of fact ive seen some of those guys selling off ... its definitely not like was just a few years ago.... not just your imagination elton, ive noticed same thing...

 

[DavidGC]

I've always been curious why is it that detectors do not follow the trend for every other type of consumer electronic.
Laptop computers used to cost thousands. Now I can buy a brand new, perfectly good HP laptop for about $300 (with a big hard drive, CD/DVD burner, WiFi and a built-in camera). I can access the sum total of all human knowledge on the internet with a phone that cost me $45 and a 1-yr commitment (and you can get that for a lot less). Oh, and that phone has a 7 mega-pixel camera in it; I bought a 5 megapixel Nikon camera about 10 years ago for several hundred dollars. I can buy a solid state storage device about the size of a postage stamp (a "thumb drive") with multiple gigabytes of storage for $20. The first one I bought years ago had a quarter of the storage and cost four times as much. I can put a couple of thousand hours of music on a device that originally cost hundreds that now costs $20. The examples could go on and on.

So, why is it that a simple device that detects metal objects -- a technology that has been around since before WWII -- keeps getting more and more expensive? Discrimination and target ID circuitry is not that new or complicated. LCD or other displays have been going down in price over the years, not up.

Is it economy of scale?

 

[dave5710]

Supply and demand. Reality shows showing bozos digging up great finds cause a demand in detectors. Manufacturers raise the price of detectors as demand increases. Sometimes with slight modifications, as a different model, with extras or some other slight change. I can't tell you the number of people that have stopped and talked to me over the years that have either tried detecting and quit or know someone who tried it and quit. That would cause a glut of used detectors on the second hand market.

 

[GeorgeinSC]

As long as the Federal Government continues to Overspend and then print more money to cover their spendthrift ways we will continue to have the value of our Dollar sink like a lead weight thrown into a mile deep ocean.

The decrease in the value of the dollar shows up in the ever increasing price of everything that we purchase. The Federal Government does not include the decrease in the purchasing power of the dollar in their "Inflation Index". Due to the decrease in the value of the dollar actual inflation is three to four times what the federal government says that it is.

 

[ironsight]

Here is something I've noticed. Although most people complain that these are tough times and all I see more people able to afford the finer things in life than I have in the past. I see you average Joe next door with 2 nice vehicles and a boat, I see not old people living in the nicer houses in town but younger couples. Yes there is still those I see struggling, but I'm seeing a lot of people doing very well for themselves...........

Credit!!

 

[Hightone]

People don't understand, when you print more money out of air and throw it into the system, it now takes more money to buy the same thing. Prices don't rise, the value of the dollar declines because there is more of them. At this rate, it'll be like the Yen. 10,000 buys a candy bar. Yet my SS increases by $20 a year. HELP!!

 

[Hightone]

I call it the 10 factor. In the 60s, I made around $100 a week. A car was $3000. Gas was 33 cents a gallon. A McDs burger was 12 cents. Our house, $14,000.

When I retired a few years back, I was making $1000 a week. A car averages $30,000. Gas is $3.30 a gallon. A McDs, $1.00. House, $140,000.

Of course not all things follow that factor. Technology (IC chips) changed a lot. An IBM 16k computer (360/80) as big as a small VW was $12,000 and that didn't include the keypunch system. The Atari 800 32k was $399. Then the Commodore 64k was $199, These had no monitors or peripheral devices. Mass producing CMOS has had an enormous impact on pricing.

The US government has nothing tangible to back it's currency. At one time, precious metals did (until Nixon). But once they took the freedom to back it with a promise, the flood gate opened. We do have the abiility to back it like Saudi Arabia does, with oil, but special interests bloock those measures. Gas in SA is 18 cents a gallon, because it is so plentiful. Here, we are kept hostage to buy it from other countries, making them rich, because they dig it and we won't.

 

[Larry (IL)]

I agree with everything except your last sentence Hightone. The US is third in the world for oil production, slightly behind the Saudis and Russia. Oil is bought and sold on the world market, everyone pays the same for the raw product. South America gas is cheap because of government gas subsidies. There are not many cars in the whole country and they belong to the rich. Politicians and oil companies appease the rich with gas subsidies and other "favors".

 

[Hightone]

That's true. I should have said to have enough oil to supply ourselves while more than enough to supply others countries as well.

I know the oil production scheme is a political one. Mexico and Canada produces more oil than Brazil or Kuwait, but we import from the latter more than the former, while exporting our own. Heaven forbid we add a pipeline from Canada. Kuwait wouldn't like it.

Go figure.