Selling Equipment

The value of your gear on the used market is never as high as you want it to be. 

Nick Coury, former General Manager of Dury’s Camera in Nashville shares his insight on taking in used gear as a buyer as well as his experience in liquidating gear in a personal capacity for friends.  “You will never recoup the costs of the equipment comparable to what you spent on it.  Whether it’s something with lots of years of usage (i.e. that wonderfully worn Domke bag), obsolete equipment (film cameras? Slide scanner?), a market flooded with similar equipment (another Canon 5d Mark IV) or even really niche gear (tilt/shift lenses, underwater camera housings), the money you can get is nowhere near the money you spent to originally acquire it.” 

Selling things to private buyers piecemeal may find buyers who value the items and are willing pay a little more, but you have to balance that with the time the volunteers are spending to seek out those buyers, arrange shipping or pickup of the gear, and account for the cash nature of these transactions.  Selling to professional used photography equipment buyers or larger camera stores with a used-equipment area simplifies the sales process, but those companies need to buy gear at a little lower value than private sales because they need some margins to cover their costs to advertise and resell the items as well as have some contingency in case the used item stops working or is damaged after the purchase transaction.