Hi,
it seems that many dealers want to wait before offer the Contax ND again. This is what our sources are saying. In the hope of getting a better price in 6 months than now. IMO that will be almost imposssible. Competition is not sleeping.
If Canon or someone else comes out with a fullframe sensor for around 3-5K, the price for an ND will tumble definitely under the current ebay prices. Nikon will just come out with a Nikon D50 and Nikon D70s end of April, very likely with a kind of D200 in autumn. Canon promised again a surprise for this fall. So we can expect a "hot" second half of 2005. And this does even not include the potential revival of the Contax name with a different cooperation partner or an SLR add-on for the Zeiss Ikon name...
So I put a big question mark under this wait and see strategy of some dealers. This does not mean, that the ND is not a very good alternative at the moment. It is still full frame, and only Canon can catch up there for a ultiple of the price
Regarding the ebay price from this HongKong dealer. This dealer tries to sell ND since almost 4 montsh now for the same price. Reflecting taxes, costums etc., the price is too high if you have similar ofers on ebay from the US.
Prices for a brand new ND with warrranty have been over the last couple of months on ebay between 2500 and 3000 USD. I think Kent got the last one. The last one on ebay a couple of days ago was from a private person in Canada, a used model, not brand new. He even did not respond to e-mails. I suspect therefore that he bid himself to the ca. 3200 USD he was "getting" on that auction. I made a test-bid with a very low price and 5 minuets later an unkown bidder bid a few bucks over me... a typical sign, that the seller tries to push the price upwards...
But I do think for other news, I will open a new thread. This one is getting to large (and to slow to open) for new readers