Question Depreciation of used equipment

[Nico-ITA]

Good morning everyone,

I currently have my eyes open looking for my first underwater photography kit and am evaluating used equipment.

Scrolling through the various ads, I was also checking at the same time the prices of the same equipment but new, so as to understand the savings.

At this point I'm wondering, if I wanted to try to assume an average annual depreciation of used equipment, what percentage loss do you think I could consider?
An average estimate, but considering good or very good condition material.

To give a random, but concrete example : let's say a housing plus a wet lens plus a strobe that in total have a value of $3000 if bought new.
After one year, what percentage would you take off that $3000 if you were to resell it or evaluate used equipment? (A percentage that can work for both seller and buyer)

Many thanks
N

 

[OTF]

Good question, I don't have a specific percentage for you, but if you use Ebay's advanced search you can look at sold prices and calculate something.

Cameras are particularly hard on this front (even vs other dive gear) because new versions are constantly coming out.

 

[Nico-ITA]

I have tried, but it is not easy. One would have to check each ad to see how long the material for sale has been in use.

I will guess an average depreciation percentage, tell me if you think it would make sense :
-30% for items with one year of life and in good/very good condition.
Would you buy it/would you be willing to sell it?

To resume the initial example:
New 3000$
Used for one year 2100$

 

[rjack321]

It all depends on the brand/model/utility. Did a fancier more functional model come out? Is the one you bought still considered top of the line? Was it "mid range" in 2022 and "low end" now? Was it "low end" in 2022 and beginner grade now?

It's no different than a car, a low end vehicle with 80,000km is vastly more depreciated than a high end luxury car with even 150K km

 

[Nico-ITA]

Yes I guess you are right, it is difficult to average.
If anyone experienced in the field can help me out with an evaluation, please write to me privately.

Thank you

 

[Barmaglot]

As other said, there is no hard and fast rule. Camera housings tend to depreciate faster than most other equipment, but this is not uniform - some models retain value better than others, and there can be sudden drops in average pricing as a new model is released, people jump to the New Shiny, and old models get dumped on the market.

Ports usually retain value better than the housings, as they can be taken from one setup to the next. Used ports generally get sold either when people move between mount systems (i.e. M43/APS-C/DX to full frame, or the other way around, or to a different manufacturer's system) or when someone hangs up their fins.

Strobes usually hold their value the best, even very old ones like YS-250 frequently sell very quickly at a high fraction of their initial retail price.

In some very rare cases, used items actually appreciate in value - for example, Nikon used to make the Nikonos RS underwater film SLR system, but it proved unpopular, so they discontinued it in 1996, after just four years of production (they kept making the Nikonos rangefinders all the way into early 2000s, but that's a different mount). Unlike the fully mechanical Nikonos cameras, the Nikonos RS was capable of autofocusing, and over the years, there have been several efforts to adapt its 13mm fisheye lens to modern cameras - it's a water-contact optic, specifically designed to correct for aberrations caused by the water/glass/air interface, and thus provides unequaled image quality at very wide apertures. Early efforts centered around Nikon DSLRs, as the lens was based on F-mount communications protocol, but recently, Isaac Szabo developed a conversion for Sony mirrorless cameras - he takes a Sony 50mm f/1.8 lens, replaces its optics with the ones from the Nikonos RS 13mm, mounts the front dome element of the latter in a custom adapter for a housing and suddenly you have an a diagonal fisheye that is sharp, corner to corner, even at f/1.8, with electronic aperture and autofocus, and at the same time, extremely compact. However, since the RS 13mm lens was only manufactured at a low rate for a few years three decades ago, supply is extremely limited - some estimate there were no more than a few hundred made total, and after this conversion became available and publicized, prices spiked from $1200-1500 to $3000-4000 or more.