His pastime soon turned into a full-time job and in 2011 he founded MPB. To better understand the used camera market I interviewed Matt Barker, the CEO and founder of MPB.com, one of today’s largest online camera traders in the world.īarker was an ardent camera enthusiast who began trading cameras as a pastime while at university studying economics. ( Editor's Note: You should also read our story on 10 Things You Should Know When Buying Cameras on eBay) Here’s a list of six of my favorite used camera sellers: You are no longer dealing with an individual who may or may not be reliable but with a serious business that wants you as a customer and wants to keep you as a customer into the future. They have taken the guesswork and worry out of buying or selling gear by developing trustworthy rating systems, fast communications, dependable shipping and easy returns. The other factor has been the arrival of entrepreneurs with business models focused on customer service and satisfaction. One is the rapid turnover of new cameras and photographers trading in existing cameras to make new ones more affordable. Two factors have caused the used camera market to explode. Now the secondhand market is filled with hundreds of thousands of used cameras of every make and model. Camera stores accepted some used cameras in trade, but only a few had more than a dozen secondhand models to sell. Buying used gear from reliable camera traders makes it easy to get top of the line cameras in pristine condition at huge savings.īefore the Internet, the used camera market was relatively small. While, for some people, it implies an item of lesser quality, or something that is worn out or "old," that hardly applies today. I know that the word "used" puts a lot of people off, but it shouldn’t. We’ve certainly come a very long way in the last 50 years. The magazine was filled with pages of classified ads for gear and there were no pictures. Writing about used cameras for Shutterbug has a certain irony because I remember when Shutterbug began as an oversized yellow tabloid publication sold on newsstands. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars on photo equipment that was "almost new." The exorbitant pricing for new camera gear is, I think, driving the expansion and popularity of the secondhand market. I wasn’t deterred, however, because I rarely buy new cameras and, instead, avoid these high prices by buying camera gear on the secondhand used market. I was amazed at how many new cameras and lenses were selling for over a thousand dollars or two. I began my search by browsing new camera gear listings and soon experienced some serious sticker shock. Since I live a good distance from any urban area with a camera shop, I always go online to buy camera and lenses. A few weeks ago during a photo shoot, I dropped and fatally damaged one of my cameras.
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